


By Any Other Name

by OnlyOneWoman



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Aftercare, Alternate Universe - Canon, Anal Fingering, Angst, BDSM, Ben to the rescue, Billy Bones backstory, Black Sails post season 4, Boys Kissing, Captain Flints backstory, Confused Pirates, Denial of Feelings, Dom/sub, Dominance, Emotionally Constipated Pirates, Friendship, Frottage, Game Of Power, Hair Brushing, Hurt, Insecurity, Insomnia, Lost Love, Love, M/M, Masturbation, Non-Consensual Spanking, Non-Penetrative Sex, Oral Sex, Over the Knee, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Slavery, Past Torture, Peeping, Post-Canon, Rough Sex, Save all our ships, Save our pirate sons, Seduction, Sexual Content, Sexual Fantasy, Shameless Smut, Skinny Dipping, Sleepy Cuddles, Slow Burn, Smut, Spanking, Storytelling, Teasing, Tenderness, Treasure Island Can Suck It, Treasure Island Is Fake News, Weaning Off The Rum, confused feelings, oblivious love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-06
Updated: 2017-10-16
Packaged: 2018-10-15 09:28:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 47
Words: 38,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10554008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OnlyOneWoman/pseuds/OnlyOneWoman
Summary: I guess it was inevitable. Since Steinberg and Levine gave us a very open ending and let us know that the story John Silver tells Madi about Captain Flint's ending, may or may not be true, I will now make an attempt to give TI the finger too. If you've not finished season 4, you should stop reading right now because there will of course be a lot of spoilers.The both frustrating and in the same time very uncertain ending of Black Sails and the idea of people telling the stories they want and it's up to us to decide what to believe or not has, together with these changes of names (McGraw/Flint, Hamilton/Barlow, Manderly/Bones) and using of unverified characters (Solomon Little) made me come up with this "Operation: save Billy and clear his name" fic. (Without attacking any other ship or character, I might add.)So here he is, Ben Gunn to the rescue, six months after the end of Captain Flint.(Comments are, of course, MUCH appreciated!)





	1. Chapter 1

_You’re crazy._  
  
He didn’t say it, but he might as well have and honestly, Ben agreed. This was crazy, a right down mad idea but John Silver had done his fair share of mad things, not to mention their former Captain. In other words, he wasn’t one to judge and he didn’t.  
  
Ben Gunn was standing in the port, with a small sack of belongings on his shoulder and half of his coins hidden in a purse under his shirt. Silver had been generous, despite the purpose of Ben’s departure. Even understanding.  
  
_You know I think this is beyond foolish, but I’ll keep my part of the deal. For all our sake._  
  
The Scottish man threw a look around the port. Tortuga. He’d been forced to ask around very carefully, of course, but the rumor of a very large man being found raving on Skeleton Island and last seen walking around in Tortuga, leaving the ship who picked him up and refusing to tell his name, had made Ben’s mind spin. And here he was now, six months after the ending of Captain Flint, looking for a man most people in Nassau thought had left for good. Rumors said he’d even returned to England.  
   
The hour was already late and the man who no longer listened to the name Ben Gunn, was tired. The journey had been quite rough with hard winds and he was relieved to leave the leaking, stinking ship and the company of loud idiots, talking about the legend Long John Silver and Captain Flint’s death, having no idea who these men were, only images. Exaggarated, ridiculous and inhuman images that held no more truth than fairytales. He left the port, walking in the direction to the nearest inn and paid for a not too dirty room, some acceptable stew, bread and cheese along with a pitch of ale that tasted like it had been watered-down. He ate alone in his room.  
  
_What if you don’t find him?_  
  
Silver had gotten a lot of small wrinkles around his eyes during the war and the man seemed more tired now as the peace had come. He’d been standing in the house he shared with Madi, leaned on his crutch with a weary look on his face. Ben had not had a good answer to that. Or why he wanted, no _had to_ go. He had no good explanation to the need, it was just there. Constantly reminding of itself like an old wound no longer needing to have the bandages changed, but refused to stop itching. And for some reason, Silver had not questioned him. Ben Gunn had left the maroon island and gotten on a ship to Tortuga. And he was also still in Nassau.  
  
The man put the candle out and made sure the pistol was placed within good reach. John Silver was right. This was crazy.


	2. Chapter 2

”Tall man. Looked like a damn giant, I’d say.”  
”So you’ve seen him?”  
”Maybe, maybe not.”  
  
Ben rose his eyebrows and the wench smiled. She was pretty and clearly aware of it. She leaned over the table, purposefully making her large breats more visible. Ben took up a coin from his purse.  
  
”I cost more than that, my friend.”  
”Well, I’m not here for that, friend.”  
  
She laughed and leaned even further over the table.  
  
”You’re telling me you’ve just come ashore after two weeks at sea, and you’re not hungry?”  
”Not for that, sorry. I just want information.”  
  
He put the coin on the table and took up another one. The wench chuckled.  
  
”I may have seen a man fitting that description, yes. A good-looking fella, or at least he could’ve been if he’d managed to smile and clean up a bit. Looked like hell, to be honest, and cared more for our cheap ale than the company of women.”  
”Sounds like him. Did he give you a name?”  
”Sorry, no. I asked him, but he said it wasn’t important and I didn’t find it worth the risk to insist. He was, after all, really big. And quite grumpy, if I might say so.”  
  
Grumpy? Also a way of putting it. Why the fuck was he here? Ben swallowed the last of the lukewarm ale and gave the wench a friendly smile.  
  
”I’m grateful for your help, miss.”  
”My pleasure. Sure I can’t make something more for you?”  
  
She leaned over the table again, visibly trying to look tempting and Ben guessed had he been a different kind of man, it would have worked. Now he just shook his head.  
  
”Quite sure, miss.”  
”What a pity. You’re a handsome fella, sir.”  
”I guess, thank you.”  
”Should you change your mind, just let me know.”  
  
Ben shrugged. That wasn’t very likely.


	3. Chapter 3

They all saw him fall. Well, Ben hadn’t, but anyone who’d seen the tall first mate slip and fall was positive he’d died. But why would that be the case? Billy had once survived falling right into a storm and he was a good swimmer. But more important, Ben couldn’t make himself believe it and so he had let it slip from his tongue at the Nassau Inn. Little could he have known, someone would take that wishful thinking and make a story of his own.  
  
It was stupid, really, but fact was most of the men who knew Billy Bones’ face had died in the last fight for Nassau and those few who remembered, enjoyed a good story as much as anyone. The story that was told on the streets, was the one of Billy Bones sitting by Captain Flint’s side as he lay dying in Havannah and given the map to the treasure Flint had buried on Skeleton Island. No one but Billy Bones knew it’s location, so it was said. And those who’d known Ben Gunn’s face enough to single him out from other blonde, bearded men were of no concearn because Ben had always been one to stay in shadows, being content with the occasional warmth from others rays of light.  
  
It could’ve stayed there. A good story. Ben wasn’t really sure when that stopped being enough. He turned in the lumpy bed, listened to the sound of crickets and laughing costumers. When he’d left with Silver and Hands to take Flint to the plantation in Savannah, he’d only followed because Silver asked him to. The man didn’t know then that Ben was the one who’d released Billy from captivity, and by that partly responsible for the abduction of Madi Scott. Since the last battle, where Woodes Rogers had been defeated and Silver decided he no longer wanted to play the role given to him by Billy, Madi, Flint and Hands, the rift Billy once had tried to create between Silver and Madi, the scheming quartermaster had turned into a huge gap. Visible, irreparable.  
  
It wasn’t actually Billy’s fault. Silver knew that, Ben too. Madi, he expected, had never believed Billy capable of coming between them. It took more than a frustrated first mate to make that kind of rift. It was sad to watch, the future queen’s utter disappointment with the man she’d never thought would lie to her. And the fact that Silver didn’t seem to care if she did.  
  
Sleep eventually came to him and when Ben woke up the next morning, it took a while until he realised he was not on the ship. Or Nassau. Or the Maroon camp. The former pirate often had trouble landing in the now after the night. Images of his old crew, the cage and the war showed up unbidden before his eyes in the moments between sleep and wake. And Billy.  
  
It was natural, he supposed, since he’d worked close with the man ever since the release. He’d seen the man change, at first slowly and then, by the time the war had started – if you could really call it that – rapidly. The determination of getting rid of Flint and put Silver in his place. To make another face for the civilization to fear, when Vane had met his end at the gallows. Ben often wondered if Billy regretted not saving the man, despite the sign from him not to. After all, it seemed as if Vane would’ve been the one who could understand his cause far better than anyone else.  
  
But as passionate as Billy Bones was when it came to the brotherhood between pirates, just as off and lonely did he appear to be among the relationships between two persons. When thinking about it, Ben couldn’t remember the man ever speaking about such things.


	4. Chapter 4

Flint had been angry at first. Cursed them all and especially Silver. More than once, Ben had wanted to step in and tell the man to shut the fuck up, but John had always given him a look, asking him not to. The first part of the journey to Savannah had been strenuous for them all, but on noone more so than Silver. He’d looked like he was constantly fighting a battle with himself, talking only as little as possible and take to sleep far later than the rest of them.  
  
But the closer they got to the place, the easier it became. At one point or another, it was as if the Captain was too tired to keep fighting and it was both heartbreaking and beautiful to see. The person they’d taken with them from Nassau, slowly ceased to exist and by the last part of the journey, Ben couldn’t tell who the person travelling with them was anymore. Silver had looked just as baffled, but not worried. And not because they were escorted by Israel Hands, in case of Flint making resistance, but because of something else, some reason Ben hadn’t been able to see.   
  
He’d seen it. They all had. From the window in the corridor where they’d said goodbye. How the last of Captain Flint’s persona left the man as he was reunited with Thomas Hamilton on the field. The sight had made Ben’s heart jump. Silver hadn’t told him much about why this place was the only option, why they had to take Flint there, no matter what.   
  
_This is the only way to end the war, Ben. I will tell you why when it’s done, but for now you just have to trust me. Captain Flint is dead for the world._  
  
And the man had seemed so certain. Perhaps because he had to believe in it for his own sake. Ben knew it was a betrayal. Against Madi, against himself and very possible against Flint as well. At least until they’d saw the reunion, the ending of Flint’s war, a peace treaty signed by a kiss and the pained blue eyes of John Silver watching it. The way his hands had turned white around the crutch and window sill. How his breathing almost stopped watching the most important person in his life, leaving him forever.  
  
Silver had been silent on their journey back. Not angry or averse, just silent. It often took two or three tries before he heard words spoken to him and when he did, he looked as if he’d woken up from a dream and Ben could see that it wasn’t Madi the now so quiet man saw before him. It was sad but also beautiful, seeing two of the three men who’d influenced Ben’s life since leaving the maroon camp, suddenly become… themselves. And that, along with Madi’s overwhelming disappointment and inability to accept Silver’s decision, was what had made Ben pay attention to the strange, hollow feeling he’d walked around with since Billy fell in the water.  
  
Explaining to Silver why he had to find Billy had not been necessairy. Despite the words of Ben’s foolishness, the man clearly understood. For Gods sake, he’d sent a man to Savannah to search for a man believed to be dead, a man who for all they knew could’ve been nothing but a fantasy. A picture in Flint’s head.   
  
But they’d seen it. Ben had seen it. The fantasy, the man in who’s name Captain Flint had gone to war, was not a ghost or fantasy. The kiss between them had been one of flesh and blood and in the time that had passed since that moment, a part of Ben’s mind had clinged on to the image. Of a man laying the mask off, becoming himself again. And in his dreams, when his restless sleep came at night, he could no longer see James McGraw leaving Captain Flint behind to take Thomas Hamilton in his arms. In his dreams, it was Billy finally turning his back to the anger, the hate and bitternes, and become a man who would allow to be held close in Ben’s embrace. 


	5. Chapter 5

At first, Ben had dismissed it. The flutter in his chest, the warmth in his stomach. The sense of loss when _he_ wasn’t near. The man’s hate for Flint was both understandable and mad. Ben wasn’t blind to the Captain’s lack of care for his crew, for his madness and twisted battles for power with Silver. And Billy. It was, Ben soon understood, a battle that had been going on for a very long time and none of the three men involved seemed capable to stop themselves.  
  
Their frustration, their anger and unyielding will within all three of them, was a force that would destroy them all. Had they not all been so alike in that regard, they’d made an almost invincible union. But they all pulled in different directions and when Silver finally realised the damage it was doing, it was too late. And the death of Flint and rebirth of James McGraw wasn’t enough to heal that wound. The freedom in Nassau or the Maroon Island couldn’t undo the rift between Silver and Madi. The kiss on the field wasn’t enough for a man who couldn’t let go of Billy Bones.  
  
Whatever it was causing it, the hole Billy had left behind him, only grew. Ben’s dreams became an involuntary meeting place for them, where the angry, hurt face and frustrated eyes flashed before him. Whatever he did, wherever he went, Billy’s voice and face could appear at any time, so terribly lonely and wrecked it took several minutes after waking up, before Ben could let go of the vision. And maybe the images would’ve decreased, wasn’t it for the ship arriving from Tortuga with news that reached the island. Rumors mostly, but Ben’s heart had speeded up at the mention of the large man being picked up on Skeleton Island, presumably drinking his way through the taverns in Tortuga and refusing to give a name.  
  
Eventually, Ben had been unable to resist. Silver had seen the restless, worried looks long before Ben realised himself he had to leave. And when the next ship had sailed to Nassau for supplies, he’d followed and then left for Tortuga as soon as he could find a position on a ship.  
  
Captain Flint’s treasure, Long John Silver – who apparently had a parrot on his shoulder according to questionable sources – and their disappearence after the war was still the main topic of discussion on most pirate ships and taverns. Only once did Ben hear his own name being mentioned, by a drunken boy with large ears and a scar on his face, clearly not at used to the bottle as he thought.  
  
”I’ll tell ya… Mr. Silver’s still lookin’ for that hidden treasure. Mark my words, lads, old Flint had it cursed and the on’y one who knew it’s position, is Billy Bones.”  
  
Ben had been still quiet, listening to the story getting more and more ridiculous.  
  
”He’s lookin’ for a way to bring it back, but Flint’s ghost is watching it, makin’ every man who lay eyes on it mad. And Mr. Silver hisself just disappeared! Never seen or heard from’im since the war ended.”  
  
A wench with wide hips who had come to refill the party’s cups, snorted.  
  
”I heard Bones drowned.”  
”Drowned? Billy Bones?”  
  
The boy with the scar laughed.  
  
”Aye, sure he did! And I bet Long John married that maroon queen’s daughter, Charles Vane rose from the dead and Ben Gunn has left the account to become a… bloody cheese maker! Billy Bones drowning? You’re a fool, Hannah, if you believe in such stories.”  
  
The wench snorted.  
  
”Cheese makers and marooners, my ass. You’re more full of shit than our privy, Patrick, and I’ll believe in your rambling tongue the day you make better use of it. Downstairs.”  
  
The lewd comment made the men cheer and whistle and the buxom wench patted Patrick’s cheek.  
  
”How about a second round, boy? And don’t you go around spreading foolish rumors of Bones drowning. As far as I know, he was last spotted in Tortuga, drinking his way through the taverns. Bet it takes some time drinking that body to death.”  
  
During the whole conversation, Ben had seated frozen on the spot and when he’d eventually left the tavern and later found a crew willing to let him join them to Tortuga, he wondered if it had been a mistake to not simply return to Nassau. But by then, he’d already signed to join for one journey as a crew member and Ben Gunn may have been a traitor for releasing Billy during the attack from the Spanish, but he wasn’t a dealbreaker. He was going to Tortuga.


	6. Chapter 6

He should’ve stayed in Nassau. That thought repeated itself once he’d left the ship. This was madness. Leaving friends – well, at least almost friends – behind to go searching for a man who’d betrayed them. Or not. To be perfectly honest with himself, Ben was prepared to let someone unknown bear the names of both Billy Bones and himself, along with any rumors of treason or obsessiveness with cheese, as long as he could find the man again. He’d never truly felt like a part of Captain Flint’s crew, or the war, or Silver’s followers. The man Ben had followed, was Billy and with him gone, no other man would do.  
  
Tortuga was not unknown to Ben, but it still felt unwelcoming. He was alone, adrift even and there was still very possible that Billy was either dead or hadn’t set foot here at all. After all, rumors were all Ben had. Rumors and longing.  
  
Although, staying in Nassau or on the maroon camp would not have been better. Not with Silver, Madi and the man who still seemed so very present despite his absence, invisibly standing between them. They didn’t understand each other, wanted to, but Ben realised there were things impossible for them to find a common ground to. Silver would never understand how the war could be more important than a single man’s happiness, especially not when it seemed so endless and costly. And Madi, raised to put the care of many before the love for one, couldn’t see how one man’s tortured soul could be the ruin of many and that sometimes, the most powerful tool could do more harm than good.  
  
Billy’s voice, his words and belief had been too powerful. Worked a little too well and it had destroyed him. Ben looked out over the port, the people and straydogs, felt the smell of fish and garbage, of unwashed bodies, spices and body fluids. Ports never smelled good.  
  
He bought some food, searched for an inn, found a room and crashed on the bed after a quick and uninteresting meal, unusually tired but still restless. Ever since leaving the cage in the Marooners Camp, Ben had felt a constant need for movement. It was honestly a bit tiresome by now, but whenever he’d been still for a while, it was as if he needed to make sure he could still walk around free. He’d mentioned it for Billy, prepared to get laughed at, but the man had only nodded.  
  
_No wonder. Felt the same when I got released from the Navy._  
  
Little by little, they’d exchanged background stories and Ben soon came to understand just how important the crew was to Billy. It was more than comrades or collegues. They were family. Brothers beyond boarders of blood and when Ben realised Silver had betrayed the man and made the crew turn on him, he’d felt a chill down his spine. And he’d cursed himself for not daring to do what Jacob Garrett had done, but instead stayed helpless like a child when the man he’d followed was backstabbed.  
  
Friendship. Loyalty. Guilt. And love. Dangerous things, even if you were only watching it. Sooner or later, it would sweap you off your feet if you weren’t careful. And Ben had never been very steady on his feet.


	7. Chapter 7

”One more.”  
”Are you sure, mate? I mean…”  
”Do not fucking ’mate’ me, old man. Said one more or… Or I’ll fucking punch your face. I have coins!”  
  
The man who was partly draped over a lonely table in the corner, didn’t seem to be in any condition to pour a drink straight into his mouth without spilling half of it and certainly not throw a punch, but the inn keeper nodded at the wench.   
  
”Give him another one.”  
  
The inn keeper was a patient man and known for his good spirits. The giant in the corner, how ever, was testing that. A lot. Not by making a scene or being violent, but by simply sitting in that corner and look like death. Not a good way to draw customers. Two of them had already left earlier than usual, due to the sad bastard and the only reason he was still served, was to avoid a fight.  
  
The giant could hardly hit the lips with the cup and just as expected, a good deal of the rum fell down his bearded chin and down his throat instead. Not that he seemed to care. The inn keeper cursed silently for his big animal scaring his customers away when the door went open and a man entered. The inn keeper sent a silent prayer of thanks for the wall hiding the giant and put his most friendly smile on as he approached the customer.  
  
”Good evening, sir! What can I offer you to drink?”  
”A glass of rum, please.”  
”Of course.”  
  
The man looked quite neat and clean and the inn keeper prayed he wouldn’t discover the sad dog in the corner. To his great relief, the man sat down by a table close to the barrels.   
  
”You’re not from here, right?”  
”From Nassau.”  
”Nassau? Really? Then you must know about Long John Silver?”  
”I’ve met him.”  
”You have?”  
  
Ben tried to hide a smile. The legend Billy once had created in Miranda Barlow’s old house, had truly gotten wings. However, he was quite sure the man would be less than pleased to realise that.   
  
”They say he’s as fast with that crutch as any other man with two legs. And his parrot, I’ve heard, is known to pick out the eyes of his enemies.”  
”Really? I thought parrots ate seed.”  
”It’s a battle parrot. A trained battle parrot!”  
  
Ben practically coughed out his drink from laughter. A trained battle parrot? This was beyond ridiculous and a part of him actually wanted to return to Silver, if only to tell him about it.  
  
A groan from the corner interrupted his thoughts.  
  
”A…nother… one…”  
  
The voice was ragged, hollow and Ben put his cup down and turned around. The corner was dark and the man looked more like a taller version of Ben in the cage on the island, than the man it was. Ben swallowed.  
  
”Billy?”  
  
The face hidden in the shadow of the corner moved forward and a bearded, swollen and dirty face squinted at him.  
  
”Ben? The fuck are you doing here?”


	8. Chapter 8

The room was small and not very clean but on the other hand, Billy wasn’t very clean either. After leaning on Ben like a human crutch back to the inn and almost fall down the stairs on his way up to the room, Billy sank down by the wall with a groan as Ben locked the door. The drunken man rubbed his eyes.  
  
”I assume you have some reason for this…”  
”And you for whatever the fuck this is.”  
  
Ben was angry, he had to admit. He had no right to, actually, but he still was. Billy looked at least ten years older, weatherbeaten and worn out, eyes dark with a bitter glance. He smirked. It was more of a joyless grimaze than a smile.  
  
”Silver sent you to finish me, or what?”  
”No, but if he had maybe I should’ve accepted it. The hell have you done to yourself?”  
”Ah, you’re here to judge me, Ben Gunn… You want a fucking confession or what? Why are you here?”  
  
Yes, why? That was a good question he had no good answer to and he glared at the man on the floor, suddenly reminding very much of the state Billy’d been in the day Ben freed him at the Underhill estate. If you replaced the blood with cheap rum. The former first mate coughed and looked up at him again with reddish, but curious eyes.  
  
”Cat got your tongue or what?”  
  
Ben sighed.  
  
”You know what, go fuck yourself, Billy. Don’t know why the fuck I came here in the first place…”  
”Well, that makes two of us, Ben Gunn. If you’re not here to finish me, then what?”  
”I came… to look for you.”  
  
The drunken man rose an eyebrow, the snear incredulous.  
  
”Look for me?”  
  
Ben swallowed. Honestly, he had no other answer, at least no one that seemed appropriate to say now and Billy snorted, but didn’t seem angry. Just drunk, lost and so fucking lonely. No one had looked for Billy in a very long time, that much was certain.  
  
”I’m not here because of Silver or Flint on Nassau or anything. I just had to find you.”  
”And now you have. Now if you excuse me, Ben, I’d like to get some sleep since I guess you don’t have any rum here I can drink to stand you.”  
  
Ben just glared and the giant man snorted.  
  
”That’s what I thought. Now shut the fuck up and let me sleep.”  
”You’re an ass.”  
”Yeah? Then what does it make you, coming and looking for me?”  
  
The man leaned against the wall, the tall legs stretched out on the floor and shut is eyes. His clothes reeked and the beard had grown. Ben put the candle out and laid upon the narrow bed. Silver had been right. This was rightdown crazy.


	9. Chapter 9

The first thing Ben saw when he woke up, was vomits. To his defence, Billy had actually tried to aim for the chamber pot but with less impressive result. Now he slept, snoring soundly not three inches from the stains and Ben sighed. This was definately not the Billy he’d come to know before the war. He’d become more and more unlike himself by every day since Vane’s execution, or perhaps not. Ben hadn’t known the man for very long. Silver, on the other hand had, and he was surprised.  
  
That had been an interesting discovery. To realise that Billy was the one man Silver couldn’t really read or charm. Even Jacob Garrett had fallen for it in some way, despite his loyalty and friendship to the first mate. But not Billy. Not the man who’d created the legend, the deadly myth himself. Madi Scott had been charmed. Captain Flint had been charmed. The crew, the marooners, the people of Nassau. Practically everyone close to the man but Billy. And Ben.  
  
Being a silent, harmless part of the crew and of course the state he’d been found in on the island, had made Ben a little odd. At least that’s what he felt. And Billy had been the one looking after him, in his own, slightly harsh way. An extra blanket, blunt questions. Did he sleep well? Feel stronger? And while being on shore, the best parts of the meat, a bit more bread and cheese. Yes, Billy had taken care of Ben, seeing more than just a useless wreck and the attention had made it easier to let go of the worst nightmares. Together with Jacob, he’d been Billy’s closest man and it had felt good to have purpose again. Ben assumed this could be part of the reason why he’d searched for the first mate, but it still seemed a bit… weird.  
  
He rose from the bed, used Billy’s handkerchief to clean up the vomits and then he went outside to empty the chamber pot on the inn’s privy. There was a well on the yard, outside the inn, and Ben fetched a bucket of water, washed the sleep from his eyes and had some to drink. Then he walked back inside the room and poured a whole bucket of water over the snoring first mate.  
  
Cursing, growling and spitting, the sad pile of human flesh came to life, wilde-eyed and angry.  
  
”The fuck was that?!”  
”Good morning to you too.”  
  
Ben stood on a safe distance – drunk or not, Billy was strong and violent – and looked at the raging man, nodding at the stains.  
  
”You’ve made a mess and it reeked.”  
  
Still partly between sleep and wake, and probably terribly hungover, Billy finally took a look around with peering, reddish eyes. He grunted, as if he wasn’t sure about if it was worth staying mad since it was, after all, his mess. Ben took the bucket.  
  
”I’m getting some more water and then, maybe you could clean up a bit before breakfast. There’s a soap next to you. And you might want to shave.”  
  
Without waiting for an answer, he went back to the well, filled the bucket and then gave one of the inn’s girls a coin in exchange for a slice of soap. He went back, prepared for some clumsy attempts from Billy to kick his ass, but the man was sitting on his knees, head in his hands and looked like he actually tried to wake-up. An old mirror, cracked but still good enough to use, stood on the dresser and Ben put it before the man along with a knife and the soap.  
  
”Tend to that damn bush.”  
  
Billy laughed. A hard, joyless sound, but the sneer on his lips wasn’t as grim as it had been yesterday.   
  
”Yes, _mother_.”


	10. Chapter 10

Was it quite usual for a man to be this happy over an old mate shaving his beard and hair off? Ben would usually say no, but despite still looking anything but civilized, the clean-shaven face and very short stubble on the head was a huge improvement. Ben handed him a piece of bread, some grapes and grilled fish on a plate.  
  
”Eat.”  
  
He sat down, not within reach but not on a noticable distance either, with his own plate and cup. Water would do now, to not make Billy throw himself into drinking first thing in the morning. The man silently took the offered plate and started eating.  
  
They didn’t speak, just ate in silence and Ben let his gaze slide over the tall, still a bit unsteady form on the floor. Billy looked visibly older, somehow grey and bowed, like a tree still young but bent and broken by a storm. The man had survived a lot. When he’d finished his meal, he sighed.  
  
”Now, will you tell me why Silver sent you?”  
”He didn’t.”  
”And I’m supposed to believe that?”  
  
Ben glared at him.  
  
”Already forgotten who _didn’t_ betray you? Who released you?”  
”And I spared your life in return, so we’re even. I wasn’t asking about you, I was asking about Silver.”  
”As I said, he didn’t send me, but he knows I went looking for you.”   
”The king approved?”  
”You were the one turning him into a king. As I recall, you didn’t actually asked him.”  
  
He sounded a little harder than he’d meant to, but this was the truth and Ben had never lied to him before and damn well wouldn’t start now. He sighed.  
  
”Silver lives with his queen on the island, but I wouldn’t call him king or even her equal and neither does he himself. Certainly, she doesn’t.”  
  
Billy chuckled.  
  
”Flint called himself king when no one else did, and when everyone called Silver king, he didn’t himself… If I believed in God, I’d say He seem to have some dark sense of humour.”  
”Silver is not my king, Madi is not my queen and I’m not here because of them. Or Flint.”  
”Then why? You don’t owe me shit, and if you think I owe you anything then by all means remind me, but I doubt you’ll get much for it.”  
”I’m not here for favours. Or debts.”  
The former first mate looked confused and he scratched his new stubble on the head.  
  
”So… you’re not here to kill me, or send a message from Silver or collect a debt… ?”  
  
Ben stroke away some strains of hair falling in his face and tucked them behind his ear. He looked at the man who in some ways almost looked like the man who’d been an uninvited guest in his nightly dreams for so long. The images were confusing though not always unpleasant and Ben wasn’t sure about what they meant or how much of a reason for this they really were. He collected the plates and shrugged.  
  
”Guess I don’t really know. But here I am…”  
  
Something almost reminding of an honest smile, played in the corner of Billy’s mouth.  
  
”Yes, here you are… Ben Gunn.”


	11. Chapter 11

_I’m here because I saw James McGraw hold Thomas Hamilton on a vegetable field. Because I saw John Silver watch them from the window, torn between happiness and despair. Because the smile he tried to give Madi, that he probably really thought he was giving her, was meant for someone else. Because the emptiness I feel for some damn reason always makes me think of you, Billy Bones._  
  
That was the truth and not one Ben wanted to speak. When they’d finished their meal, the room seemed to be swarming with questions. Billy’s throat was working, as if he tried to speak but only ended up swallowing his words. The air was hot and didn’t offer much respite for his hangover.  
  
”How did you find me?”  
”Heard rumors.”  
”What rumors?”  
”An unusually large man without a name, washed up on an island and then found by a ship, heading for Tortuga.”  
”I see.”  
”And then I heard about a man, raving about a treason but still refusing to give up his name. That he talked about Nassau, Long John Silver and a war that never happened… And after a while, a boy came by the inn and I overheard him talking about Billy Bones. That he’d not drowned but actually walked around alive if not well around the taverns of Tortuga.”  
”So… you left the island, the crew and paid to get here and look for me, based on a rumour? I don’t know if you’re insane or just stupid.”  
  
Ben gave a small smile.  
  
”Well, at least there’s something you and Silver agree on.”  
  
The bitter, self-ironic glimpse in Billy’s eyes seemed to fade for a moment as Ben laughed and the wreck of a human being smiled.  
  
”Honestly, Ben, I have nothing. No crew, no ship, no money and this is the first time I’ve had roof over my head in weeks. I don’t want your pity and I’m afraid I spent my last coins the other night so if you want me to pay you back for a favour I didn’t ask for, you’ll have to wait.”  
”I’m in no hurry and I’m not broke. But I’d like to leave this place.”  
”No one’s stopping you.”  
”And I want you to come with me.”  
  
Billy laughed.  
  
”Right… And go where? Nassau? Or perhaps the Marooner’s island?”  
”We could go anywhere.”  
”Yeah sure. And then get reckognized by some surviver from the war who stumbles upon Billy Bones, the traitor, no thanks.”  
  
Ben swallowed.  
  
”Billy Bones has left for Bristol and Ben Gunn got marooned.”  
  
The human wreck looked, if possible, even more confused and he wetted his chapped lips.  
  
”They did?”  
”Yes.”  
”And Captain Flint?”  
”Rumors say he died in Havannah. With Billy Bones by his side. Some say he even left him the map to the treasure.”  
  
Billy laughed again, joyless and hollow.  
  
”Well, aint that quite the story. Someone should write a fucking book about it and make a small fortune on those sad bastards.”  
  
He became serious again, eyes flickering as if looking for ghosts in the corners.  
  
”Where is he?”  
”Flint?”  
”Yes, _Flint._ ”  
”He’s dead.”  
”You saw it?”  
”I did.”  
  
The death of a monster. The rebirth of a man. Ben swallowed.  
  
”One day, if you come with me, I’ll tell you the whole story. The true story and not the one spread by whores and bastards on the taverns to please a drunken audience.”  
”What if I don’t care about it?”  
”Trust me, you will.”  
”Then tell me now.”  
  
Ben shook his head.  
  
”This is not the right time. Or place. But… if we find the latter, I guess the former will appear. Sooner or later, Billy Bones.”


	12. Chapter 12

Silver had told him. Not the whole story, that much was clear, but more than the man himself knew. Ben was a good listener and he had heard, and seen, a lot more than Silver realised he was telling. About James McGraw and Thomas Hamilton. About the mysterious Mrs. Barlow, wife, mistress and mother all the same. And about Silver himself.   
  
After about a day, Billy was still anything but willing to go with him but he didn’t leave either. As he’d said, he had nothing. Not to go back to, or look forward to. He stayed, weirdly calm, with Ben at the inn, only leaving the room for the privy. When Ben suggested he’d wash up his rags, that reeked from dirt, sweat and booze, Billy fetched some water to the room, shut the door with a kick and then, without caring for privacy, started to undress.  
  
Ben wasn’t unused to naked men. For fucks sake, he’d lived on ships for the most part of his life, but he’d never seen Billy Bones naked and it was a little too hard not to watch. The months of heavy drinking had not yet marked his body very much. He was still shaped like a fucking statue and when Ben realised he was lingering on the dark bush, embedding the soft yet rather large member, now wet from the lathered rag Billy used to wash himself with, his cheeks heated and he turned his face away. A small, ironic chuckle left the former first mate.  
  
”Inspecting the wreck, are we, Mr. Gunn?”  
  
Ben blushed even more and went outside, followed by the amused chuckle. He leaned against the wall, taking deep breaths. It was a beautiful morning, but Ben felt uneasy. The story Silver had told him, could’ve been like any other story the swift-tongued man used to tell. No more true than the tale Billy spun around Long John Silver. False pictures, maybe with a grain of truth, just enough to make people believe in them. Ben had not believed very much in them, until he himself witnessed Captain Flint’s transformation on the road to Havannah.   
  
At first, he’d thought the tormented, closed man’s calm to be a sign of defeat. A man who’d given up and had nothing left. That was until the other man, a man even Silver clearly didn’t know, began to appear. The last part of their journey, they’d escorted a stranger that yet seemed so much more real than the man who, piece by piece, had fallen apart along the way. And the partially amazed, partially tortured gaze in Silver’s eyes whenever he watched James McGraw, had been equally painful and beautiful to witness.  
  
The transformation seemed to have stuck on the inside of Ben’s eyelids, like a tattoo, showing the full pattern and colours only when he closed his eyes. And whenever the image of James McGraw and Mr. Silver, or James McGraw and Thomas Hamilton, passed his eyes more often and not, a fourth face appeared. The one of the man who’d been the first to ask for his name in the cage.  
  
Ben went to buy something to eat from the inn keeper and then went back to wait outside the room. After a while, the sounds of washing stopped and the door went opened. Billy had his now wet trousers on and he sat down in the sun with his shirt in a drenched rag around his head to dry and protect his eyes from the sharp light. Now as the gloom night was over and the former first mate’s body was slumped against the housewall, half-naked and wet, the many scars on the weathered skin were in full display and Ben followed them almost without realising it.  
  
”Got us some bread and cheese.”  
”No rum?”  
  
Ben snorted.  
  
”No rum, Mr. Bones.”  
”So it’s Mr. Bones now, huh?”  
”You were the one starting with ’Mr. Gunn’.”  
  
Billy chuckled under the rag.  
  
”Tell me, why did ’Mr. Gunn’ get marooned? What could that _loyal_ man ever have done to make Long John Silver put him ashore on a godforsaken island all alone?”  
  
The emphasy on ”loyal” was bitter. Silver never found out who released Billy and by that was at least partly guilty of the man’s betrayal, but on the other hand, Madi would’ve died in the fire if Billy hadn’t dragged her out. The man’s actions afterwards were another matter, but the fact that Silver unbeknownst had Billy to thank for Madi’s life that time, had eased Ben’s guilt. He sat down beside the wreck that started to look more like a man.   
  
”I heard Ben Gunn promised to find Captain Flint’s treasure, but failed. And then, the crew got tired of his inability to fulfill that promise.”  
”And he got marooned?”  
”That’s what they’re saying. Captain Flint is dead, Billy Bones is raving on the taverns, Ben Gunn is marooned on Skeleton Island and Long John Silver… well, he’s said to live happy with his wife.”  
”And how much of it is true?”  
  
Ben shrugged.  
  
”Everything. Nothing. Depends on who you’re asking, I guess.”  
  
Billy didn’t answer that and Ben cut them some breakfast. The silence between them was awkward as they ate. Billy’s hands were a little shaky and it was clear he’d not had too many sober days since he was picked up by the ship. Ben looked at the man. Last time they’d seen each other, Billy had looked at him while aiming for his former brothers. The last thing Ben had seen, was the former first mate lowering his gun, pretending he didn’t see Ben and given him a chance to run.   
  
”Do you have any crew now? Or… a position of some sort?”  
”Apart from local drunk, you mean? Do I look like I’m holding a position on a ship to you?”  
  
The tone was sardonic and bitter. Long John Silver had taken everything Billy cared for and left him empty. Not that the man didn’t have his reasons, hell, they all had their reasons to backstab each other on one occasion or another, but no matter how unwilly both Billy and Silver would be to admit it, they were much more alike in some matters than they knew. They’d lost the most important thing in their lives and while it had happened in different ways and for different reasons, the pain they experienced seemed oddly similar. Ben scratched a bug bite on his arm.  
  
”Come with me.”  
”Where?”  
”Nassau, Port Royal, or Cuba… Somewhere people wouldn’t reckognize Billy Bones or Ben Gunn.”  
”I don’t understand what the fuck you’re up to, Ben, but this is kind of mad. And who the fuck asked you to come and nurse me like a mother?”  
”No one. But unless you have something beside the taverns keeping you here, you might as well just come with me.”  
”Yeah? Why?”  
”Because maybe, I don’t know, there’s a chance to do something better than just stay here and drink yourself to death while feeling sorry for yoursel. And if you, by an chance, wouldn’t like the place we’re going to, I’m pretty sure you could drink yourself to death there as well. Besides, I would still like to tell you the full story of Captain Flint, the woman you heard about as Mrs. Barlow and Thomas Hamilton.”


	13. Chapter 13

He’d expected more protests and the fact they didn’t come, was quite frankly worrying. When Ben had convinced the wreck to follow him, it was clear the wreck didn’t care where they were going. That was a little bit too quick of a turn for Ben’s taste, but on the other hand, it made things easier. Nassau was, as Ben had guessed, not an option and when he told about a ship heading as far as West End, Billy just shrugged. The man still drank a lot, which was no surprise, but he didn’t seem to try and drench himself like he’d done at the inn where Ben found him. It was, how ever, clear to Ben after the first day on the ship, that Billy didn’t care two shits about where he was or where they were going. Most of the time he spent in the bunk they shared, not talking to anyone but the bottle.  
  
It was, how ever, not easy to drink as much as usual on a ship and Ben secretly rationed the rum and filled it out with a bit of water. Billy seemed to have decided that grumpy silence in the bunk was the best way to spend time on the ship and Ben discreately paid the captain to leave Billy off duty, which otherwise was a given. They wind was good and Ben worked well with the crew, who’s ligther company was much needed after the days with only Billy. They travelled under the names Mr. O’Malley and Mr. Holmes, pretending they’d just left a less understanding Captain who didn’t bring much fortune on their huntings. Captain Naft, poor man, was easy to use in that purpose since his less successful hunts were known, but not so well-known that people knew his former crew members in person.  
  
Without the beard, thick hair and firm leadership appearence, the crew and their Captain seemed completely unable to reckognize the rebel leader and his closest man from the war in Nassau. Non of them said they’d been there, but still. Ben knew more than well that a crew didn’t speak as openly with a couple of strangers onboard. To them, Billy (Mr. Holmes) was just a sad drunk with an unpleasant mood if you didn’t leave him alone, which they happily did, and Ben (Mr. O’Malley) the sad drunk’s loyal friend who frankly deserved better friends than Mr. Holmes.  
  
The nights in their shared bunk, were uncomfortable, but not intolerable. At least, Billy didn’t refuse to wash himself a bit – Ben still had a piece of soap left – and when he couldn’t drench himself in rum and beer as much as usual, he didn’t throw up all over. But the large man was a restless sleeper and, as Ben soon discovered, one with many nightmares.  
  
Ben was a light sleeper and woke up from the moving, heavy body next to him several times at night. The men around them didn’t notice, it wasn’t exactly unusual to share bunks and more than often, the muffled noises from nightly intimacy could be heard from mates taking comfort in each others company, given a little privacy in the dark. Ben, however, had no such ideas for a lot of good reasons, but when they were almost halfway to West End, the partly sleepless nights became an issue and one night when Billy’s movements and twitching eyelids over unspoken nightmares had been going on for too long, Ben had enough.  
  
The sounds in the sleeping quarters were as usual a mixture of different kinds of snoring, some sleeptalking and the occasional burps and farts leaving the men while they were heavily asleep. Ben was used to all that, Billy too, but the constant restless movements in the bunk was another thing and after having tried to use his back muscles to press Billy closer to the wall and by that give him less space to writhe, only to get exhausted from having restrained his poor back muscles, Ben simply turned around, leaned close to Billy’s broad back and put an arm around him.  
  
Billy’s body made a slightly more forceful twitch and Ben almost lost his breath. Was it too close? He stayed still, kept his arm on the man’s chest and then the man sighed and went back to sleep. Ben didn’t dare to move until he was sure Billy slept deep, as deep as one could do in his state, but after a while he relaxed against the large man’s back and drifted off.  
  
They woke up like that and to Ben’s surprise, the grumpy man didn’t immediately push his arm away. That day, Billy was just as uninterested in his surroundings as usual, and didn’t leave the bunk apart from hitting the privy, but when night came and Ben took to their quarters, the silent man facing the wall reached out a slightly shaky hand behind him, found Ben’s hand and pulled it to his chest.  
  
The rest of the journey, their nights were spent in that position, with Ben pressed close to Billy’s body and their hands partly entwined on Billy’s chest. The sudden, unnamed and uncommented closeness was not strange in itself. Just between them and especially when it came to Billy. Ben had never seen the serious man engage in more intimacy than a quick embrace or a pat on the shoulder with anyone, man or woman, before, and it made him think of Captain Flint.  
  
He could see the scene before him so clear, despite the distance from the window and the field. He could see the former Captain Flint’s black dressed figure being released of his shackles, his whole posture being one of partly relief and defeat. And then the man had turned his gaze to the workers.  
  
Ben’s heart still speeded up from the memory. How the last parts of Captain Flint had started to fall off James McGraw’s shoulders as the man he’d loved for so long appeared before him. Thomas Hamilton, dressed in white as the other workers, had looked like he’d seen a ghost, but only for a moment. Then, he’d thrown himself in the man’s arms, just knowing. Just knowing.  
  
Obliviously, Ben held Billy’s hand harder, the last night on the ship. They would anchor at West End early next day if nothing unexpected happened, but Ben couldn’t seem to get the image of the men on the field out of his head and go to sleep. When he close his eyes, the same image came back to him, over and over again, until he buried his eyes against Billy’s shoulder, hoping the warm pressure from the man would keep the memories abay.  
  
He’d almost fallen asleep, when the man moved and the pressure disappeared. Ben blushed in the darkness, grateful the man couldn’t see it and he hoped the unwanted closeness wouldn’t cause an issue, but Billy simply turned around, roughly put his burly arm under Ben’s neck and arranged them so Ben could sleep on his arm. And before Ben had any chance to feel embarressed, Billy had fallen asleep with his mouth in Ben’s hair.  
  
Their legs weren’t entwined, but the closeness and the fact that their weariness and relaxation encouraged it, their bodies were almost flush against each other. Ben had one arm on Billy’s waist and the man’s other arm was slung over Ben’s shoulders, warm and heavy. The large, muscled man slept even more calm now, but Ben was suddenly wide awake. He could feel the heavy, but calm and regular breaths in his hair, the firm pressure from the wide palm on his shoulders and hardened lenght brushing his own crotch by every breath. Billy’s palm was warm and when he moved in his sleep, he didn’t pull back, but pressed himself closer. Ben, afraid this might cause them problems, very carefully turned around, but when Billy’s body stiffened as if Ben had rejected him, Ben was quick to wriggle his back a little against the man and keep the large hand close to his chest. The man relaxed again, but didn’t seek further contact.  
  
They laid like that, close, with Billy’s large cock hard against Ben’s lower back and their hands firmly kept on Ben’s chest, as the ship’s familiar movements rocked them back to rest. But non of the two men could sleep anymore. They just laid still, close and warm in the darkness, trying to ignore the carnal needs their closeness had stirred up.  
  
Ben had no idea how to behave. Billy didn’t pull back and the situation was, how ever awkward, not actually unpleasant. In another bunk, two mates where fucking in silence, only the slightly raised breaths and moving blanket giving any hint on their intimacy. Billy probably noticed it too and slowly, like he was just as unsure as Ben on how to act, he tentatively let his hand slide down, slow enough for Ben to have a chance to stop him before it got too obvious.  
  
When Billy reached the buttons, he let his hand brush over them, as if searching for confirmation. Realising Ben was just as hard as himself, made the man’s breathing clearly more relaxed and the large hand cupped around Ben’s clothed cock, made a light squeeze and then started rubbing it. When Ben didn’t remove the hand, Billy started to rub his own cock against Ben’s ass, while he kept stroking. He moved Ben’s hand to his own hip, letting him squeeze the firm buttock as he moved his hips in a simulation of fucking.  
  
They didn’t make a sound but breathing and the low sound of bodies grinding against each other. Soon, Billy’s hand opened the buttons on Ben’s trousers and snuck a warm, callous hand around his cock. He started stroking the lenght, not rough and quick to be done with it, but quite slowly as if he still tried to figure out if this was a good idea. By every stroke, he rubbed his clothed cock against Ben’s ass, sliding up and down as he worked Ben to release.  
  
When Ben came, he did so with his mouth buried in the bend of Billy’s arm, and with his own palm around Billy’s moving hand, to not come on the mattress. He wiped himself on the turned down side of the mattress and then he quickly moved to undo Billy’s lacings. The bulge made the fabric strain and when the large cock sprung free, it was hot and heavy in Ben’s hand, the head wet and Ben started stroking it.  
  
After a little while, Billy almost aggressively pushed up Ben’s leg and forced his hand still. Then he started bumping inside Ben’s fist, keeping it in an angle that needed no explanation to Ben. The man wished to fuck him, or at least fuck, if not Ben so at least someone and Ben didn’t really mind being the surrogate in this moment. Billy’s breath was strained and got heavier as he came closer and he came in his own palm with a restrained sigh. 


	14. Chapter 14

The West End port didn’t differ much from other ports Ben had visited and Billy didn’t seem too curious about it either. They’d not spoken about the night and they’d fallen asleep after the sudden intimacy, backs turned against each other.   
  
Late next day, when they’d grabbed their few possessions and paid the Captain, waited for their turn to get in the boat ashore and a little while later stepped out the yawl and said goodbye to their temporary mates, Billy walked with long steps towards the town.   
  
”Wait.”  
  
Ben had stopped and Billy turned around, frowning and put a hand over his forehead to get some cover from the sun.  
  
”What?”  
”Where are you heading?”  
”West End, last time I looked.”  
  
The man was visibly annoyed and Ben reckognized the anxious glimpse in the blue eyes.   
  
”You’re going to the inn, huh?”  
”Wasn’t planning on sleeping in a tree.”  
”And how would you pay for the room?”  
  
Billy had, obviously, not thought about that and he gave Ben a glare.   
  
”You making me leave Nassau and getting me off in the bunk, doesn’t make an _us_ of any sort. You get that, Ben Gunn?”  
”Did I fucking say that? I shouldn’t have to point out who crossed the line first on this matter and we were hardly alone in having a quick tug. At least three couple were fucking, one of them in the bunk next to us, and I didn’t see fucking matelotage rings on their hands. Jesus…”  
  
The sun was already close to midday and here they stood, arguing like a couple of lovers in the port. Ben swallowed.  
  
”If you still want the full story, and something to eat before you think of robbing the first drunken idiot you run across, come with me. Otherwise, I’ll be around here until I’ve found a farmer.”  
”A farmer?”  
”They would know best where to find a piece of land.”  
  
Billy just stared at him, scratching his stubble and he honestly looked pretty stupid.  
  
”Piece of land, you say?”  
”That’s right.”  
”Are you… planning on leaving the sea?”  
”It certainly looks like it.”  
”And what would you do instead?”  
”Grow some crops, buy a dairy goat and perhaps get away from the sea once and for all.”  
”Ben the farmer…”  
”I don’t go by that name anymore, as you may recall.”  
”Right… The farmer, by any other name…”  
  
An incredulous chuckle left the former first mate and he let his eyes slide over Ben, who stood there looking far more civilised than himself. As if suddenly realising how ragged he looked, Billy’s eyes fell onto his own teared trousers and hollow boots. Ben smirked.  
  
”Yeah, since you’re out of money and in no condition of committing a successful robbery, or convince someone to hire you, I suggest you’re coming with me.”  
  
Billy’s eyes hardened.  
  
”I don’t need your pity.”  
”Good, ’cause I aint giving you any. And I don’t need your self-pity either, but we both need to fucking eat. Dammit, Billy, can’t you just be fucking practical?”  
  
The man, who’d been one of the most practical during the resistance for a long time, looked like he’d been hit in the face, as if remembering something he’d prefered to remain hidden. Then he shrugged and the expression of empty disregard came back.   
  
”Fuck you, Ben.”  
  
He started walking and Ben didn’t care to go after him. Billy was weak from the abstinence, without money and looked like he was just that: a moneyless drunk. Ben shook his head.   
  
His visable purse was more than full. Silver had made Ben accept about as much as he could bare of the treasure without making it too obvious. Wollen fabric was a good way to muffle the sound of coin and most of the purses Ben kept attached on long leather strings inside his wide trousers legs and under the shirt. He had his usual purse by the belt and some other coins stuck in linen underneath his leather cuffs. Should someone be foolish enough to try and rob a man with two sharp knives, two guns and a sword visibly attached to the belt, they’d still not discover how much money he really walked around with.  
  
Ben was in no hurry. After asking around the fishermen, advising him to search for a man called Gustus who in just before time to crop, sold goat meat on the market, Ben went on his way. He found the man who, after a lot of suspicious questions accepted Ben as a serious farmer and honest man who actually could pay for both land and livestock. He wiped his blooded knife on his apron and waved off some flies.  
  
”At least you’re not one of them fucking pardoned pirates, Mr. O’Malley. My wife, rest her soul, was a Yorkshire lass and I can hear you’re from her regions. Good, honest people.”  
  
_Good, honest people? If he only knew…_ Ben was very grateful he came off as harmless and thanked his good fortune for still having is accent after all these years so far from home. The amount of land available was not overly large, but it was good land, Gus assured him, and providing for a family was not hard if the weather was good. The land itself was one of plenty and there were several good places for fishing. That was, of course, if Ben had money enough. A lot of people had died in a particularly nasty fever some months ago and more than one house had been abandoned on the western side of the island. The authorities, of course, kept an eye on them but there’d been no rush to that area and as far Gus could tell, getting a piece of land wouldn’t be a problem.  
  
On his way back, Ben was half in mind to get straight to the town office, but then he remembered Billy. Where had that idiot taken off? The town was crowded and it was close to sunset. Ben recalled the last place he’d seen the man and headed in that direction. He was less than surprised when he saw the man slumping outiside an establishment, emptying his guts in the gutter. Ben cleared his throat.  
  
”Had a successful evening, huh?”  
”Fuck off.”  
”Whatever. I’m getting a room here for the night and tomorrow I’m heading to the inland.”  
”Good for you.”  
  
Ben rolled his eyes.  
  
”Fucks sake, Billy. At least do me the favor of not dying in a stupid tavern fight the first day ashore. Just come with me, if you’re not too fucking pissed to share a room with me.”  
”God, I’m sick of you and your fucking mother hen tendensies, Ben.”  
”Good. Then maybe you could start acting like a man instead of a stupid, stubborn boy who can’t hold his drink.”  
  
Billy looked like he wanted to punch him, but he was in no state of succeeding. Ben just shrugged and stepped inside the inn, asked and paid for a room and when he saw Billy in the door, gloomy and probably still not sure about this, Ben added another coin for his drunken companion and promised the inn keeper he would remain in their quarters and not disturbe the guests.   
  
Ben nodded at the drunken man and like a big, grumpy dog, Billy followed him to their quarters. The bed was big enough for both of them and Ben took some food from one of his bags, cut the fish and bread for two and opened a bottle of cider for them to share. The former wreck, still far from the man Ben once had known but still closer to him than before, accepted the food and the weak cider in silence and Ben realised that the man was less drunk than tired. Once again, his mind slipped away to the road to Savannah and another weary man, who resisted at first but… Ben forced the thought away before being able to finish it and cross a barrier he wasn’t sure he could or would want to cross. Billy had already stretched out on the bed, soon snoring from his drunkeness and Ben formed himself to a roll under his blanket, far out on the edge of the narrow bed.


	15. Chapter 15

Despite all the fuck you:s and fuck off:s, Ben had company when he left the next morning. A very grumpy and hungover one with swollen face, but still. Billy seemed to have decided on being as anti-social and moody as possible and hardly answered when being talked to with anything than mutters or grunts. Ben just rolled his eyes and stopped trying to engage in talk. It was a beautiful morning, the air was fresh and he was off the Marooner’s Island, off Skeleton Island and Nassau with it’s intrigues and memories was far behind.  
  
The papers were all in good order and they passed a number of both ockupied and abandoned farms and houses as they rolled towards the piece of land that would be the first thing Ben called home since leaving his parents as a yong boy. He threw a glance at the silent giant, who’d fallen asleep on the carriage between the sack with grains and the pile of tools and weapons. Ben shook his head at the snoring man. What had he done to himself?  
  
Ben had never been a leader of any sort and as a follower he believed himself acceptable at most. When he’d released the betrayed and chained man, he’d not really had any other thought in his head than the horrible vision of the first man speaking kindly to him since he’d been left alone, meet his end like animal led to slaughter. He’d not been aware of Silver’s plan on turning against Billy and to be honest, Ben could understand why Silver hadn’t told him. Not even Jacob Garrett, Silver later told, had been able to leave the first mate’s side and there’d been sorrow in the one-legged man’s voice when he told it. The treason hadn’t been an easy choise for the pirate king. Non of the men or women closest to power in this allience had stood before easy choises and as far as Ben could tell, they were all both villains and heroes depending on which story you told.  
  
The road was surprisingly smooth and Billy slept undisturbed by rocks, holes or the sound from the wheels. The small house Ben had been able to get his hands on, wasn’t very nice but it had walls and a roof, fresh water nearby and soil for crops. When Ben stopped the carriage, it was almost noon and Billy opened his eyes, peering against the light.  
  
”Where the fuck are we?”  
”Home.”  
  
The ragged giant gave a joyless grin.  
  
”You have a little wife waiting for you too, huh?”  
”Of course. And five kids and an old mother. Are you gonna sit there or start fucking help?”  
  
To be honest, there wasn’t much help needed, but having a snoring drunk laying on the carriage like a sad pile of flesh was fucking depressing and Ben had no intention sharing food with someone who didn’t help out.  
  
The door was old and skreaky in their hinges and when Ben opened it, the house was just as dark with a musty smell and thick layers of dust and cobwebs in the corners. It was small. A kitchen and a chamber and the few furniture left in there that no one had bothered to come and steal, were a bed, an old but steady table, a couple of stools by the fireplace and a wardrobe with only one door left. All three windows in the house were covered with thick dirt and had more than one crack in the glass. No one in their right mind would call the place pleasant, but it was a house and that was more than they’d had yesterday.  
  
_They_. Ben took the old bucket and went to the well close to the house as Billy stood on quite unsteady legs and looked at the place he unbidden had been brought to. When Ben came back with the bucket, the man had surprisingly started to unload the carriage.


	16. Chapter 16

”Who’s Thomas Hamilton?”  
  
Ben put another wood in the fire, not turning around. The flames danced before his weary eyes and he wanted nothing but sleep. They’d worked hard all day, to Ben’s surprise not without much complaints from the former first mate, who’d even catched a rabbit now roasting over the fire. Ben rose from his heels and wiped his hands off on his not very clean trousers.  
  
”I guess that depends on how you see it. Thomas Hamilton is… to put it plainly, the beginning and the end of Captain Flint.”  
  
Billy laughed, his voice still very much coloured from the long months of heavy drinking.  
  
”You know what I liked about you when you joined our crew? That for once I had someone to talk to who wasn’t constantly scheming for other purposes than the wellfare of the crew, without being too stupid to actually talk to.”  
”That’s your idea of a compliment?”  
”It’s the truth, simple as that. And speaking of truths…”  
”Thomas Hamilton?”  
”You’ve repeated that name a couple of times now and if there’s any real significance to it, I suggest you stop beating about the bush.”  
  
The rabbit was done and put to cool off. Billy, however, didn’t seem to mind the burn and started slicing up the meat with his long knife. Ben scratched his head.  
  
”Captain Flint’s story, starts with four people, actually. I London, many years ago. Peter Ashe, Miranda and Thomas Hamilton… and lieutenent James McGraw.”  
”I know about Peter Ashe.”  
”And you’ve heard about Miranda Hamilton, only under the name Mrs. Barlow.”  
”Flint’s woman?”  
”Well… yes, and no. This is a story that will take some time to tell.”  
  
Billy snorted.  
  
”I’ve realised that and it better be worth hearing.”  
”It is. Much more so than the stories people are telling about us, Flint and Mr. Silver now. The woman you’ve heard about as Mrs. Barlow, Miranda Hamilton, was married to a man named Thomas and the two of them met a lieutenent named James McGraw in London.”  
”James McGraw?”  
”Who later would be known as Captain Flint.”  
  
Ben looked straight at the former first mate, who looked like he didn’t believe a word and Ben just nodded.  
  
”Never lied to you, have I?”  
”Not until now. Now I’m either sure your insane or just a very poor liar.”  
”What would I gain from lying about this to you?”  
  
Billy just shrugged, apparently not being able to come up with a reason good enough to explain Ben’s little ”rescue”.  
  
”Go on then.”  
”Mrs. Hamilton was rumered to have an affair with the lieutenent.”  
”Was it true?”  
”No. Not in… the usual way. An affair I guess is… a secret to the other spouse and in this case, Thomas knew about it.”  
”Are you telling me, our Captain started off as running from the law after fucking another man’s wife?”  
”Far from it. He… There was no affair as one would call it, since… well… James McGraw had a relationship with Thomas Hamilton as well. And that’s how the story of Captain Flint started.”  
  
The large man with the weary eyes, slowly put another slice of meat in his mouth, chewing and swallowing under silence. Then he put his plate down and stared into the fire.  
  
”Of all the bullshit stories you could’ve given me… you’re choosing the least believable.”  
”Nontheless, it’s true.”  
”Because _Silver_ told you?”  
”I have my own reasons to believe it, that have nothing to do with what Silver’s said or not said, and I will get to them, later. Point is, no matter what you think of him or Flint and after all they did I don’t blame you for hating them, but the reason why we’re sitting here, actually is because your Captain fell in love with another man.”


	17. Chapter 17

At first, Ben thought the man would just simply call him a liar or at least dismiss it as bullshit, but Billy just sat there, staring into the flames and barely touching his weak drink. The silence was thicker than the hot evening air outside.  
  
”Say something, Billy.”  
”What would you have me saying after such a story? I’ve sailed with that man for years, Ben, and he’s not… fucking capable of loving anyone. Not even himself. And now you want me to believe the reason he risked our lives again and again, is because he… fell in _love_?”  
  
The former first mate’s tone was one of scorn, but also of underlying doubts and something else Ben couldn’t name. Billy’s dark blue eyes suddenly looked almost… innocent. Like they belonged to a young boy, completely unexperienced with the matter and therefore brushing it off with the same ease he would do with a father’s warning about running too far away from home. Ben took a sip from his weak drink.  
  
”He’s a man, isn’t he? Why wouldn’t he fall in love like any other man?”  
”Because Captain Flint never was like other men.”  
”Ah, no, he’s a monster, a greedy demon risen from the pits of hell, ready to see all men no matter how loyal, dead for his cause. And Miranda Hamilton is a witch, who’ve casted a spell on him, one that will lead to the curse of every man ever to sail under his banner.”  
”You’re mocking me without even knowing the man.”  
”I know two men, Billy. Captain Flint and James McGraw.”  
”A man can go by any other name and still remain the same. A name doesn’t change who you are.”  
”Then what’s yours?”  
”What do you mean?”  
  
Ben shrugged.  
  
”Well, can’t imagine anyone naming their son ’Bones’.”  
”Billy Bones has no parents. William Manderly had.”  
”William Manderly…”  
  
Billy grunted.  
  
”Haven't gone under that name since I was a kid and I don’t miss it.”  
”And are you the same?”  
”William Manderly was a boy that never lived to be a man, so no, I’m not him and hasn’t been for seventeen years, which I now realise was your whole point with the Captain so I guess you have a point.”  
”And do you believe me?”  
”I think this is more a question of how much I believe Silver.”  
”Not when I’m done telling this story, it wont.”  
”So go on and tell it then, instead of dragging it out, since it’s so fucking important to you.”  
  
The man yawned and Ben put his cup down.  
  
”I think that’s enough storytelling for tonight. I’m quite tired, but if you’re still here tomorrow, I’ll tell you more of it. If you help out with the roof.”  
  
He pointed at a gap where rain would be pouring down sooner or later unless they did something about it. Ben bit his lip.  
  
”That is… if you’re staying.”  
”Don’t see any point in it… but on the other hand, I guess leaving is equal pointless.”  
”At least if you want the rest of the story.”  
  
Billy’s eyes got a curious glance.  
  
”And what do you want, Ben Gunn? I have no story to tell in return.”  
”Everyone has a story. Now, are you coming to bed or not?”  
  
The bed was just a lumpy mattress and some blankets, hardly large enough for two men and Billy swallowed.  
  
”I’ll sleep outside.”  
  
Ben shrugged and handed him a blanket.  
  
”Suit yourself.”  
  
The large man took it and walked outside, shutting the door and Ben sighed. He took his shoes, belt and vest off and let the small fire die. As the crickets and his weary body drove him closer to sleep, he could’ve sworn he heard sobs outside, but by then he was too tired to listen more carefully and a moment later, he was asleep.


	18. Chapter 18

It was still dark when he woke up. Too dark. Ben rubbed his eyes and sat up.  
  
”Didn’t mean to wake you.”  
  
Billy’s voice was ever lower than usual and he was sitting on the floor, hands shaking. Ben rose and the man shook his head.  
  
”I’m fine, Ben. Just… get back to sleep.”  
”You’ve not slept?”  
”A little.”  
”Nightmares?”  
  
The man snorted.  
  
”You should’ve been an excellent mother.”  
”Thanks, but I have enough nightmares as it is without adding children.”  
  
Billy smiled.  
  
”You do seem to sleep sound as one.”  
”You really don’t remember, do you?”  
”What?”  
”I had nightmares about the cage… and my brothers, for a long time. You and Jacob, you used to sit with me when it happened…”  
”I remember.”  
  
Billy tried to keep his hands still and Ben simply draped his own blanket around him and sat down by his side.  
  
”How did you get it?”  
”What?”  
”Your name.”  
  
The former bosun’s fists were fidgeting and he sighed.  
  
”I was a scrawny lad, around fourteen or so, when I got press-ganged. The navy didn’t make me fatter. So, when Flint _rescued_ me and I chose another name for myself, they crew already called me Bones, due to my appearence. Gates and DeGroot used to say they didn’t need to raise the black, just hoist me up as a their own Jolly Roger. Billy Bones seemed… fitting, I guess. And you?”  
”Accidently shot myself in the leg when I was drunk.”  
  
Billy laughed and Ben smiled.  
  
”Flattering, I know.”  
”Well, you learned to shoot, no doubts about that.”  
”Me being alive has more to do with luck than skills.”  
”Isn’t that true for all of our kind?”  
”Probably.”  
”And now you’ve seemed determined to ruin my plan on drinking myself to the grave.”  
  
Ben once again noticed the shaky hands and without even thinking, he took them in his own. Billy sighed but didn’t pull away.  
  
”What are you doing?”  
”Helping, I hope.”  
”What would be of actual fucking help, would be to leave me alone.”  
”What do you know about loneliness, Billy Bones? Huh? Besides from Silver’s and your brothers betrayal, what do you know about real fucking loneliness? When you’re seeing your entire crew die in front of you, one by one, until you’re the only one left?”  
  
The heat in his voice surprised himself. Suddenly, he was the one shaking and to Ben’s great surprise, Billy took the blanket and arranged it around them both.  
  
”I’m sorry, Ben.”  
  
It was a swift but nontheless honest apology and Ben just sighed and leaned into the other man’s warm shoulder.  
  
”You may think what you want of Silver and Flint, or the story of Thomas Hamilton, but whether you believe me or not, one thing will always be true.”  
”And what’s that?”  
”That it’s not good for any man to be all alone.”  
  
Billy didn’t answer but didn’t move away either. Instead he put an arm around Ben’s shoulder and stretched out his long legs.  
  
”Go back to sleep, Ben. I’ve had enough of your stories for now.”  
  
Not knowing if it was an order to return to the mattress or not and with the warmth of the former first mate’s body close, Ben leaned into the man and allowed himself to be hold as sleep once again pulled him back to it’s quiet embrace.


	19. Chapter 19

”Where did you get this?”  
”Not for you to know if you want to get off this the easy way.”  
  
Billy didn’t answer, just grabbed the miniscule drops of his fancy and swallowed it greedily. Ben looked at him, challenging.  
  
”If you stop too fast, you can get really ill, but don’t even try to look for more ’cause you aint gonna find it.”  
  
They both knew it was an empty threat and for some reason, Billy didn’t point that out. He just handed the empty cup back and returned to the weak ale, bread and slice of meat they had for their morning meal.  
  
They’d woken up pressed close together this morning and even though non of them had showed any sign of wanting to push the other man away, it was clear they didn’t want to mention it or even pretend it happened. And to be fair, nothing actually had happened since the ship. At first it had troubled Ben a little, the unmentioned and unrepeated intimacy they’d shared that seemed such an utterly unfamiliar thing for Billy to do. Now it had become almost close to a habit, two lonely people holding onto the last sliver of human bonds still available for them. Billy leaned his giant arms on his knees.  
  
”Why did you return to the island? Figured you’d never want to see it again.”  
”Well… Silver asked me and where else would I go?”  
”Anywhere?”  
”Yeah, I realised that after a while.”  
”Then why didn’t you just look for another crew instead of coming running after me? You’ve not given me an answer to that either and don’t give me that ’I don’t know yet’ bullshit again.”  
  
The rainclouds were still lingering on the sky this morning and the sun stayed away. A passing memory of the storm that had brought him to the Marooner’s island went through Ben’s mind and he felt that strange pull in his heart he’d felt so many times since Billy spared his life back at Skeleton Island.  
  
”I missed you. That’s the simple truth. Just took some time before I figured that out.”  
”Missing someone aint a good enough reason to risk your life for. What if I’d been dead?”  
”Then I’d mourned you.”  
”What if I’d told you to leave?”  
”You did and yet here we are.”  
”It’s not good for a man to be alone…”  
”No, it’s not.”  
  
Ben looked straight at Billy.  
  
”We bost lost our crew, Billy, even if it was in different ways.”  
”Yes, I was fucking betrayed!”  
”As you betrayed Silver, as he betrayed Flint, as all of you fucking betrayed each other, yes I know. You think all of your schemes and fights for power passed unnoticed by me?”  
”I’d not have to scheme, wasn’t it for Flint.”  
”And Flint wouldn’t have come to be, had not James McGraw had the love of his life taken away from him.”  
  
Billy rolled his eyes.  
  
”This Thomas Hamilton again? What do you think I am? A girl sewing on her wedding dress, dreaming of love? I’m too old for fairytales of love.”  
”Sad.”  
”What?”  
”To think of love as nothing but fairytales. I saw the change with my own eyes, Billy. I saw layer after layer of Captain Flint fall off him the closer we got to our destination and… and I saw him reunite with the man who’s presumed death caused the birth of Captain Flint.”  
  
Ben didn’t notice his own heartbeats speeding up as he spoke.  
  
”I _saw_ it, Billy. I saw the man you have every reason to hate, diminish before my very eyes. I saw it, Israel Hands saw it, Silver saw it. It wasn’t an illusion or a lie. We took Flint to Havannah, but the man rumoured to have been drinking himself to death there, handing you the map to the treasure, is not dead, he’s vanished. He’s… become himself. And Thomas knew him.”  
  
Billy startled a little and Ben nodded, still upset with the memory.  
  
”It had been… so many years and still, he reckognized him. There wasn’t a single doubt, Billy. No hesitation what so ever. Thomas Hamilton and James McGraw never stopped loving each other and Thomas knew it wasn’t a stranger, a ’Captain Flint’ standing before him, but the man he loved.”  
  
Billy swallowed.  
  
”It seems to have had quite the effect on you…”  
”I’ve never in my whole life seen anything like it, Billy.”  
  
They fell silent and Ben felt like all strenght had left him. The image of the men had been haunting his dreams for so many nights along with the face of the man sitting next to him, it seemed to have grown too big for his body, threatening to tear him apart could he not share it. Suddenly, he became afraid Billy would torn it with scorn or just disregard, but the man didn’t say a word.  
  
The morning became brighter, warmer despite the clouds and the small fire in the stove had died when the rain started thrumming on the roof. Ben’s chest felt too tight and a feeling of emptiness and cold ran through him. He swallowed.  
  
”Now you know. And if you’ve had enough of my stories, you don’t have to worry. This was the story I wanted to tell you. I don’t know why, but I had to. I have another one, but this… this is why I came looking for you.”  
”To tell me a lovestory…”  
  
Billy didn’t sound scornfull anymore, not even mocking. Just… increadibly surprised and incredulous. And honestly, considering what Ben had done to get to tell it, one couldn’t really blame the former first mate for thinking Ben had gone completely insane.


	20. Chapter 20

Billy Bones seemed to have developed an almost scary capacity of letting things be. The easiness in how he’d adapted to Ben’s suddenly intrusion of his life, was flat out worrying and even though the fact that he’d not left yet or simply just shot Ben out of sheer impatience and irritation was a relief, this complete lack of _care_ didn’t appeal to Ben one bit. It just didn’t suit the man who’d been all around Nassau preparing, realising and watching over one of the biggest revolutions ever taking place among the pirates, to not take charge of anything.  
  
He wasn’t idle, that wasn’t the issue. It was just that he didn’t seem to question anything, or even feel the need of doing things another way or just don’t give a shit about it and leave the work to Ben. As he’d become sober enough on daily basis to actually do anything, Billy simply did what was needed to get food on the table and roof over their heads. He skinned rabbits Ben caught in the forest, chopped wood and fixed whatever he could on the old house to make it more stable. Yes, even though Billy still needed a little too much rum to not get all shivering and wild-eyed, he did his part and more without being asked, sharing the workload with others being so natural it seemed to be a part of him. The other problem, besides his sudden compliance, was that he refused to mention or even pretend the subject of Captain Flint and Thomas Hamilton had ever been brought up.  
  
One hot afternoon, when Billy was skinning another rabbit for supper and Ben mended one of his boots in the shadow of a tree, the weirdness of it all became too much for Ben.  
  
”You still think I’m lying, don’t you? About Flint and Thomas Hamilton.”  
”When did I call you a liar?”  
”You didn’t, but you still don’t believe me.”  
  
Billy’s knife flashed in the sunlight as he removed the last piece of skin and his lips were tightly pressed.  
  
”It’s not that I think you’re lying. You saw what you saw and I wasn’t there, so who am I to call you a liar.”  
”But?”  
”I lost men who were like brothers to me, because of _him_. I lost someone who was like a father, also because of him. And even… even though Silver admitted to me he was scared to be caught in his web, even when he told me he had it all under control I could see it…”  
”See what?”  
”We were all trapped in Flint’s mind. Me, Silver, our brothers, the maroons, our allies in Nassau… This was never our war, Ben. It was Flint’s and we, all of us, were merely his puppets. You think I’m ready to forgive all the shit he put us through just because of a… lost lover? I’ve not sailed with a man who’s _not_ lost someone, Ben. Doesn’t fucking mean you can drag others with you, risk the lives of your sworn _brothers_ , on a personal fucking vendetta! Fuck Flint and his lost love. Unlike countless of others, he even got him back, if I’m to believe you.”  
  
The man sounded tortured and Ben remembered the stories he’d heard small bits of. The pressgang, the storm and how Billy’d refused to betray his captain or brothers even under torture. The crew had been his family since he was still a boy and the way the men had turned their backs on him, had been a major blow and Silver, cunning as he was, had known that. Ben swallowed.  
  
”It was the only way to end it. _His_ war. When Silver told me about it, I thought he was insane, but… The war ended. And Captain Flint exists no more.”  
”And what price did Silver pay for his precious peace?”  
  
Ben looked away from the tree, at the horizon where the sun still shined bright and burning. A memory of two blue eyes, locked at the sight of something forever lost to him, finally realising what it was and then, as if the horror of it was too much to bare even for a second, the mask was back, whatever feelings John Silver would’ve had for the man leaving the world behind forever, were locked up and hidden, as if they’d never existed. Ben closed his eyes, not trusting himself to meet the other man’s gaze as the memory once again flashed before him.  
  
”He… lost something he didn’t even know he had, or wanted, until it was gone.”


	21. Chapter 21

”You ever miss any of them?”  
”Silver and Flint?”  
  
Ben just snorted at the poorly avoided question. They’d finished supper and were sitting by the opened door, listening to yet another spray of rain, refreshing the air. The day and evening had been very hot and Ben wasn’t in the mood for Billy’s self-contempt.  
  
”I was talking about the crew.”  
”You mean the men who betrayed me? Why the fuck should I miss any of those bastards.”  
  
The stroke of pain in the hard voice was barely audible, but didn’t go unnoticed to Ben. He’d spent too much time learning to interpret unfriendly voices in order to stay alive, to be fooled by the bitter first mate.  
  
”They were your brothers once. Were they not?”  
”Until they turned their backs on me.”  
”They wouldn’t have…”  
” _Had I not made Silver a fucking legend_ , don’t you think I know that?”  
”The intention was good.”  
”Fuck my intentions, Ben. See where they lead me.”  
”If you think Silver’s much happier where he is, you’re mistaken.”  
  
Billy laughed.  
  
”I can imagine he’s feeling a little trapped. He never understood commitment unless he had the upper hand. All he ever cared about was the damn Urca gold.”  
”That was true once, I guess. But not anymore.”  
”You and your damn riddles. He’s got his precious princess, an island to rule over and some of the treasure. He even managed to get rid of Flint, if what you’re saying is true, without being the villain. Isn’t that enough even for _him_?”  
”He wanted Flint, Billy. Or the man he saw him become… or maybe both.”  
  
The former first mate sighed.  
  
”All Flint ever wanted was power and all Silver ever wanted was money.”  
”Sure. And all you ever wanted was a crew to be loyal to and look after.”  
  
Ben regretted it the second he’d said it. Billy’s weary face became hard from pain, old but deep and still very much alive and the man drew his breath, sharp and fast.  
  
”You may be a very observant man, Ben Gunn, and you may be trying to save me from a well-earned, early grave but don’t for a second think I owe you shit. You’re free to tell me to leave, or leave yourself for that matter. We share a past by an unfortunate coincidence, nothing more.”  
”That unfortunate coincidence saved my life. And yours.”  
”Whatever favour you believe you owe me, has already been paid in full.”  
”Is that all that matters to you, Billy? Re-paying debts?”  
  
Ben rose from the floor and stepped out in the rain.  
  
”Where are you going?”  
”Away! Fuck you and your… thick fucking head, Billy! Bloody fucking _impossible_ ass!”  
  
With swift, angry steps Ben walked straight ahead from the house. Billy shouted after him:  
  
”The fuck’s wrong with you? Yeah, whatever! Just go out and get soaked, why should I care?”  
  
Ben turned around, hair already dripping from the rain.  
  
”Yeah, why should you care about about anyone but yourself and your fucking self-pity? Why try to give _anything_ a fucking chance before drinking yourself to the grave?!”  
  
With swift steps, angrily gesticulating, Ben left the shelter and former first mate behind, muttering and cursing to himself. Billy shouted something in reply, but Ben was too angry to pay attention. This had been a fucking terrible idea from the very beginning and Ben cursed himself for trusting a longing he barely had a name for. 


	22. Chapter 22

The surroundings were unfamiliar to him. The short checkout hadn’t been enough to learn the neighbourhood properly and to his great relief, Ben realised it wasn’t unpleasant at all. West End was, despite the quite recent breakout of plague, a land of plenty and the part of the island where their little settlement laid, was hidden by rich vegetation of coconut palms, tamarind trees, sugarplum trees and egg fruits. It was, indeed, a land of plenty, inviting to it’s new residents. Which was more than one could say about a certain former first mate.  
  
The anger had, much to his surprise, left Ben fairly quickly after he’d stormed out in the wet weather. And to be honest, Ben was more angry with himself for being naive enough to drag his former crew mate along to a life he hadn’t asked for, that Ben actually didn’t even know how he pictured and what role Billy had in it.  
  
But the man hadn’t put up any real resistance, which was baffling in it’s own. It was as if Billy truly didn’t mind what happened to either of them and simply let Ben drag him along, only to let him know he actually didn’t care whether any of them lived or died. For all that it mattered, Billy could be on his way tearing down the house in search for the hidden rum he wouldn’t find and then set it all on fire just to prove some fucking point. Or maybe he’d been following Ben to just cut him down on a hidden place. And at this very moment, Ben wasn’t sure he gave a fuck about either.   
  
The thought threw him back to the past again. To the day when Billy’d spared his life and Silver had spared Flint’s, or rather, the night before the undoing of Captain Flint, when the one-legged quartermaster had been unable to sleep, visibly torn with worry and sorrow, facing yet another choice he didn’t want to make. Ben hadn’t known about the plan at the time, only been half-aware of that _something_ was missing, not understanding it had been _someone_ rather than something.  Only now, while looking back at it, Ben knew that what he and Silver had felt, was something similiar, unnamable and foreign to them both.   
  
”Fuck!”  
  
A treacherous hole in the ground had captured his foot and Ben in a most ungraceful way, found himself straight flat on the muddy ground,  surrounded with trees that probably would’ve laughed at him, had they gotten tongues of their own. Still, the soft rustle in their leaves from the wind and the rain, in that moment sounded like a laugh to Ben’s muddy face and he even blushed as he got back on his feet, even though there were no humans around to mock him. A vicious strain in his left foot made him hiss.  
  
”Bloody hell!”  
  
So, now he’d sprained his ancle too. This evening only got better and when he eventually would be back at the cabin, Ben highly doubted Billy would have much pity for him. As a matter of fact, Ben didn’t have the tiniest pity for himself, despite the pain. He cursed between pressed teeth as he started to hobble his way through the brushwoods.  
  
”Just… fucking… like you, Ben Gunn. You bloody cunt… Son of whore!”  
  
Now, that was unfair to his late mother, who’d been a pious woman not lifting her skirt for other than saving the welt from street mud and Ben hastily crossed himself, sending a silent pledge for forgiveness to the woman who surely would cry in shame and despair should she know the route her only son had taken.   
  
”If you hear me, please forgive me, mother. I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but I hope you can give it to me for a word said in the heat of the moment.”  
  
Since the long since dead Elspeth Gunn probably was in a heaven her son wouldn’t enter, Ben didn’t thought she’d hear him even if she’d wanted to. And even if she did, why on Earth should she want to help a son who’d done anything but avoiding sin since leaving home?


	23. Chapter 23

”Go on, just say it.”  
”Say what?”  
  
The former first mate looked both amused and incredulous, but to Ben’s surprise not very spiteful at his pitiful state. Ben had tried to limp is way back, but the ground had proved to be less than helpful and he’d forced to wait by a rock, with little shelter from the pouring rain. Ben sighed and took the reached hand.  
  
”How absolutely ridiculous I look.”  
”You seem to know that pretty well yourself. Sprained your ankle or what?”  
”Yeah. Slipped in the mud.”  
”Maybe it’s you who need to be kept away from the rum.”  
  
It was still pouring down and Ben felt, however grateful, not very comfortable with being carried in Billy’s arms like a drenched damsel in distress.  
  
”How did you find me?”  
”Went out looking.”  
  
Obviously. Ben kept his mouth shut the rest of the way back and so did the former first mate, who was unusually steady on his foot for a drunk. Although, he’d not actually been dead drunk for some days now and he had definately no troubles carrying Ben back to the cottage.  
  
Billy kicked the door open and walked inside, put Ben down by the burned out fireplace and threw one of the blankets at him.  
  
”I… I should make a fire. Get your rags off.”  
  
Shivering and under the cover of the wollen blanket, Ben undressed and Billy took his vest, shirt and trousers to hang dry over one of the chairs. Ben’s long hair dripped and cause a small pool of water on the floor and the former first mate gave him a cloth and some water to wiped the mud off. Ben could swear he looked amused, but was too relieved to be under roof again to care.  
  
Billy made a fire going and poured some of the weak ale in the old pan, heating it before serving Ben, who took the warm cup with a grateful smile.  
  
”Thanks.”  
”I’m taking a look at your foot.”  
  
Ben silently stretched it out with a grimaze and hissed when the large hands lifted and squeezed it a little. Billy took his shirt off and teared one of the sleeves off, to use as a bandage.  
  
”That’s not necessairy.”  
”Just following what Dr. Howell would’ve ordered.”  
”He was a good man.”  
”Saved more lives and limbs than he ever took, God rest his soul, and still he met his end at the noose.”  
”Vane should’ve let us save him. Would have changed a lot.”  
  
Billy laughed.  
  
”Sometimes I wonder if he did it for the cause or for simply being sick of it all.”  
”Well, if he’d seen how it turned out, I guess he’d feel relieved for getting away from it.”  
”You mean if he’d known that the so called higher cause, the freedom Flint always spoke so highly about, was nothing more than the revenge of a lover? Yeah, I’m pretty fucking sure he’d be relieved not getting tangled up in that mess. He should just have told us…”  
”Vane?”  
”No, idiot. Flint.”  
”So you believe me, then?”  
  
The former first mate shrugged and started to take his own trousers off, that were still plastered against his huge legs. He swirled the other blanket around his waist and hung his clothes to dry.  
  
”To quote you: I don’t know. And now I’m going to bed. If you need help getting there, I suggest you come now.”  
  
It was ridiculous how much a sprained ankle could hurt and Ben muttered some curses as he, supported by Billy, moved over to the mattress. He was still naked under the blanket and swirled it harder around him to get come more privacy. For some reason, being carried and taken care of felt more intimate than the moment of shared pleasure on the ship and it didn’t help that Ben, despite the warm air and ale, still shivered a bit. When Billy laid down, the man made sure to create space to not accidently touch the sore foot but still kept their backs firmly pressed against each other and muttered a good night.  
  
Ben laid awake for a while, listening to the sound of sleep from the other man and felt the heat finally spread through his whole body, enough to let sleep take him. He was, after all, completely exhausted and less from the little adventure in the rain, than the conversation about Flint, Silver and Thomas Hamilton.


	24. Chapter 24

It wasn’t the first time he’d woken up in the same bed as the former first mate or another man, but sharing a bunk out of necessity on a ship was something else. It was necessity, an arrangement due to narrrow space and nothing more. This time, they had no such reasons and Ben didn’t know how to act.  
  
They’d both moved in sleep and the original position with their backs against each other, had shifted to one where Billy had his huge arms around Ben in an embrace and their thighs nestled together in a way making it impossible for the blood to not react. Billy moved again, slightly restless as one usually got when weaning off the rum and he clutched Ben closer, obliviously, but it certainly didn’t help. Ben’s body reacted as one could imagine, when feeling the hardness although covered with the blanket, brushing against him. Blood rushed south and there was nothing to do about it without risking to wake up Billy.  
  
Since the former first mate didn’t reak of rum and dirt anymore, it wasn’t an unbarable bed situation but rather the opposite. It made Ben’s mind wander off, to old memories and images of sweet moments with men who’s occasional company he’d enjoyed in bed. He’d been with women too, of course, but never really found them comparable to men in terms of pleasure. Though they were often better kissers, less dirty and not so damn skittish when it came to closeness once the fucking was done, Ben freely admitted that. Pity they had too many tits and too few cocks. Pity Ben wasn’t satisfied with their company, since it in may ways were easier to engage in.   
  
Billy shivered in sleep as if being drawn into a nightmare and Ben simply stroked the large back, suddenly wondering when was the last time the man had been with a woman or man like this. The former first mate was a very handsome man when not going down the rumdrenched road of misery and self-pity, mostly showing as coldness, harsh words and keeping others on a safe distance. For one caring so much abouy brotherhood, Billy was a pretty lonely man and when thinking about it, Ben couldn’t remember seeing him engage with others solely for the company or enjoyment.    
  
The heavy, sleeping form seemed to relax from the touch and Ben couldn’t help but feeling a small hint of gentless hitting his heart. He didn’t dare to guess if it meant anything in particular and pushed away the images of Flint and Thomas on the field, of Silver’s gaze at the reunion that uninvated kept visiting his mind. There was no comparison between those two men and this silent embrace and the fact that it came back to Ben now, didn’t mean _this_ meant anything even close to the scene on the field. The importunate longing that had made him leave Silver and the island behind remained unnamed and, unfortunately, anything but silenced.  
  
An incautious move made Ben’s sore foot twist a little and he hissed.  
  
”Damnit…”  
”So you’re awake… Was starting to wonder.”  
  
Billy’s voice was heavy with sleep but also a bit amused and Ben blushed.  
  
”When did you wake up?”  
”A while ago.”  
  
That meant long enough to be more than aware of the impact their intimate sleep was having on Ben. Ben moved to create a little more distance but it was an awkward business and his sore foot didn’t make it easier. Billy stiffened and sighed.  
  
”You have a problem sharing beds with me now?”  
”What? No… no, it’s… fine.”  
  
More confusing, to be honest and Ben wasn’t sure how to interepret the other man. He stopped moving and allowed himself to become lax again, mostly because he actually didn’t know what to do. It was strangely pleasant and yet more than a little awkward. The scent of Billy was one of sweat, salt and ocean and up until now Ben could’ve sworn he didn’t smell any different from any other man he’d come across. The scars on the torso were many but not in the least repulsive – Ben had his share of them too – and overall the man was still a very appealing sight.  
  
The calloused hand traveled to Ben’s hip but instead of pushing away, Billy pulled Ben’s thigh further up, creating a space to slip his own leg between Ben’s, removing the blanket’s small barrier. Ben didn’t dare to move and Billy remained still as well. They didn’t look at each other, didn’t speak and all Ben could think of was how the other man’s large, fully hardened cock was deliberately brushed against his own groin. Without a word, Ben let his hand slip down between Billy’s legs and took both their cocks in a tight grip. When the man didn’t push him away, Ben started to move.  
  
No matter how strange the situation was between them – no to mention the state of their relationship if there even was one – it didn’t stop any of them from enjoying the moment. They were only men and their bodies had needs. Ben felt the former first mate’s restrained pantings in his hair as he worked their lenghts, feeling the wetness in his palm, over his fingers. Ben’s mind, always ready to disturbe him, came up with pictures unbidden for, showing himself riding the man’s cock, how it would fill him up completely, hit the sweet spot over and over until sweet relief came and left traces dripping down the inside of his thigh and on the glistening skin over Billy’s abdomen.  
  
Their release came almost at the same time, wet and messy, accompanied by some low groans and curses. Ben didn’t move his hand, didn’t realise Billy’s hand was covering it, and neither of them seemed to be in a hurry to wipe off and leave the bed. Their hands were still swirled around the now limp members and their pulses still raised, their breaths slowly starting to calm down. Outside, they could hear the horse whinnying for food and water, and they let go of each other without a word, not looking at each other as they left the lumpy bed and dressed in their now dry clothes.


	25. Chapter 25

It wasn’t outspoken or even mentioned, the fact that Billy’d come looking for him and didn’t seem to plan on leaving. Neither was the nightly closeness spoken of and Ben found it both a relief and quite unnerving. The sore foot made him temporarily unable to move around and when the former first mate disappeared it wasn’t even clear if he inteded to come back. In the meantime, Ben cursed his way to the hiding place where he kept the rum and poured a small amount in a cup. Getting off the drink too fast could be dangerous and Billy could tear the surroundings open without finding the hiding place.  
  
He returned, not much later, with another rabbit for their morning meal, skinned and ready to roast and while Ben turned it over the fire, Billy fetched some water and, judging by the wet look, took the opportunity to wash off a bit, something Ben appreciated. The face was still a bit puffy and pale, harrowed and the former seriousness coloured by bitterness and self-irony, the latter something Ben chose to see as a sign of something good, a sliver of life still sparkling behind the loneliness. Whatever had made Billy stay with him, allowing to be weaned off drinking and engaging in silent closeness, it was proof that this headless idea still could bare some kind of fruit.  
  
When the rabbit was ready, Ben silently sliced it up and handed over the cup with rum. Billy looked at it with more annyoance than thirst before swallowing it in one go. He refilled it with water from the bucket and started eating.  
  
”What made you think Silver and Flint… _felt_ something for each other beyond an opportunity to get the gold? Silver was fucking scared of Flint.”  
  
Ben took a sip of the water.  
  
”Doesn’t rule out other feelings, does it?”  
”Perhaps not, but I watched them dance around each other for a long time, both of them terryfied the other would discover a weakness. They never trusted each other.”  
”Loving someone doesn’t mean you necessarily trust him.”  
  
Billy laughed.  
  
”You sound like a goddamn philosopher, Ben. Or worse, a poet.”  
”Never read much poetry so I can neither agree nor object.”  
”Love belongs in stories and fairytales.”  
”Yeah, you said that.”  
”You don’t agree?”  
”Does it matter? You, me, Silver… we all ended up where we are now, partly becasue of Flint’s lovestory, whether we like it or not.”  
”And he took the one person who loved _me_.”  
  
There was heat in the former first mate’s voice and Ben looked at him. Billy’s hands were fisting.  
  
”He killed Gates. After I was… taken from my parents and ended up on that fucking navy ship, being spared and offered a place in Flint’s crew, Gates was… You never met him, but he was like a father to me. And Flint killed him, just as he killed Singleton, Dooley and Joji… As he killed Francis and Tom in the doldrums… Silver should’ve stopped him, _I_ should’ve stopped him! The number of brothers I’ve lost for his cause, men _I_ loved, only to be abandon by all the remaining of them…”  
”I didn’t betray you, neither did Jacob.”  
”He knew! And he changed his mind when it was too late.”  
”And I wasn’t told about the plan at all.”  
”What?”  
  
Ben swallowed.  
  
”I wasn’t there, Billy, didn’t even know about it. I was in the fortress, clueless.”  
”I’m to take some kind of consolation in the fact that you set me free and wished me good luck, instead of standing up for me?”  
”And what difference would that have made, huh? I wouldn’t have been let near you, I doubt I’d even been alive. Yes, I kept my mouth shut, but that saved your ass as well as my own. I was never strong enough to stand up against both Flint and Silver and I never pretended I was. Not once did I lie to you, Billy. I’ve lied to Silver, I’ve lied to Flint, but never to you. I may be a coward, but I’m no bloody turncoat or backstabber. My loalty was always with you. Only _you_.”  
  
The little outburst seemed to have at least some effect on Billy, becasue his eyes had lost some of it’s indifference and it looked like he was searching for words, only to fumble for them in vain. As if looking for words he’d long since stopped using, or maybe never used at all. Only heard, put away under the shade of memory along other knowledge the life of a pirate had no use for, and never spoken aloud. And the image made Ben once again think of Silver, of the road back from Savannah where the one-legged man had rode in silence, still unaware of that he’d just left the only human who’d not been afraid of Silver’s own darkness, but accepted it. Asked for it. That Silver had been unable to give it, to recieve the closeness in full, to be a part of the love that both made and unmade Captain Flint.  
  
That image, as much as the one of Thomas and Flint on the field, was the reason Ben was here. The urge, the irritating invasion of his mind from dreams and restlessness all the months after Billy’s disappearence, whispered over and over again of loss. Of what a man looked like when he thought he’d lost his heart, of when he started hoping but still was too hurt, too afraid and too tired to make it more than a daydream. How that man looked when not only seeing that heart again, but being pulled into it, embraced and surrounded with the love thought to be lost. And how the third man had looked, torned between relief and endless emptiness as he watched the scene. Without understanding it, or reckognizing the source, Ben’s own emptiness had come clear to himself and since then, the only constant in his mind concerning more than the daily needs, had been Billy.  
  
The man was still silent and Ben felt his own heart speed up, tension spreading through him from the confession of something beyond simple loyalty or gratitude. All he knew in this moment, was that he didn’t want to leave. Didn’t want Billy to leave. The harrowed man looked like he’d been placed in an unknown wilderness, trying to decide where to look for shelter and he didn’t look amused or scornful anymore, just… confused and trapped.  
  
”I… I should get some more… wood.”  
  
Billy rose quickly, not even finished with his meal, and didn’t look at Ben as he hurried outside. Ben buried his face in his hands and cursed himself. What a fucking mess he’d created…


	26. Chapter 26

As the morning became midday and the heat made it impossible to do anything but seeking rest in the shadow, Billy came back on the horse after his ”wood” errend. Ben had spent the hours making fishnets and suspected Billy’s errend had been more of an excuse to stay off after the embarrassing morning meal. Still, he’d not taken off for definate and he also brought more meat, this time two ducks he sat down to pluck and he threw a glance at the nets.  
  
”Not the first time you made one of those, I suspect.”  
”It was my first task on the account.”  
”Really?”  
  
Billy looked surprised and Ben shrugged.  
  
”I got injured when we were attacked and I had to make myself useful. Our nets were in a pitiful state and to be honest, the men weren’t very good with that task.”  
”Well, you certainly are.”  
”A cheap way of getting more food on the table. Speaking of that, it’s time to eat.”  
  
The net and the ducks were put aside for another meal of bread, meat and ale, in silence under the tree. The midday stillness almost trembled in these unpopulated surroundings, where birds and beasts were their closest neighbours and few people had errends this far off the harbour. Billy, still weary-eyed from his longterm drinking, used his shirt as a turban around his head and his abdomen glistened with sweat as he finished his food.  
  
He stretched out his tall body, leaning his back against the thick bole and shut his eyes. If Ben didn’t know any better, he’d say the former first mate almost looked peaceful. They’d not continued the morning’s awkward conversation and Ben wasn’t sure he wanted to. What was the point in talking to a man who shut himself like a clam, who knew everything about brotherhood and nothing of… whatever the fuck it was Ben felt. More than lust, more than firendship and still nothing even remotely close to what Ben had assumed love would feel like. Not that he had anything to compare with except the few minutes he’d seen Flint’s and Thomas’ reunion, Silver’s gaze upon it and the equally heartbreaking vision of the man as he’d told Madi about it.  
  
There were images boarding from utter, unspeakable happiness and relief, all the way down to shattering emptiness and loss and being the spectator of it had been a very strange experience. It was like peaking through a window and seeing something that wasn’t for your eyes, only not being told to leave. If Ben was to compare it with anything at all, paintings were the only things coming to mind. Like windows to the past, more often than not lying at least a little to appear more beautiful, giving the viewer access to an idea of another human beings life. But the images of Flint and Thomas, of Silver and Madi, were not creations of an artist, but Ben’s own eyes, as were those who’d made him search for Billy.  
  
The man resting in the shadow had never lost his attraction. He was a bit soiled from work and more than a little ragged and weathered, but still very appealing despite six months of determined self-destruction. With eyes closed, the hardness from the gaze not making the face look bitter and self-ironic, Billy just seemed tired and lonely. Not lost, but not at ease either. As if he’d taken a moment of rest on a journey without no visible goal in sight, just an endless road that could lead anywhere because it didn’t matter.    
  
The loneliness surrounding the former first mate became too strong for Ben to handle. He had to erase it, if so only for a moment and he moved closer – Billy didn’t open his eyes – and lay down with his head on the man’s thigh.  
  
He suspected the man to do something. Anything from just simply pulling away to smash a fist in his face. Ben could even have pictured Billy pressing his face to the clothed groin, making use of Ben’s mouth or meet the closeness with scorn or bitter self-irony, but nothing of that happened.  
  
Instead, the hard, callouse hands slowly started to touch Ben’s hair. Large, long fingers combed through the blond locks. The muscle in the thigh was tense but when Ben felt the naked abdomen move behind his head, the breaths were smooth like a calm wave making it’s way to shore. Billy’s hands trembled but didn’t leave, didn’t wander off, they held onto the tresses of hair as were they lines and ropes in the riggings. They were scared hands, Ben could tell that with every move, every touch over his scalp and he didn’t want to disturb their silent exploring.  
  
Ben hadn’t slept with a man the way he prefered in a very long time and whatever Billy prefered – if he even care much for sexual pleasure at all – he probably hadn’t found much opportunity to have it in a while. Whatever vices Billy had, casual sex had never been one of them, of that was ben fairly sure since the time they’d spent together during the resistance. The whores of Nassau never had a visit from the first mate as far as any of the men knew. Nor had there been any rumours of male company either. Perhaps the occasional intimacy had only been a way of getting rid of tension but this, the touching of another man’s hair, the way Billy let his locks slip, slide and curl around his fingers was nothing but gentle and very far from just taking sexual comfort from another man’s body.  
  
The soft touches made Ben’s blood rush, his throat tighten and he partly wanted, partly feared Billy would keep touching, not letting go of him but keep travelling from the hair, searching along his skin and make it form goose bumps. The strain within his trousers was more than obvious by now and when Ben moved his head, just tilted it a little, he could feel the other man’s arousal for a slight second brushing against his chin. Ben had never been in a place this secluded and peaceful with anyone, man or woman, before, where no one risked interrupting or forced them to make haste. It was just the two of them, in the shadow of a tree in the midday heat, and the silent nature around them, uncaring and unjudging.  
  
When Ben moved to let his lips nibble the fabric over the hard member, Billy hissed and pulled away. Ben looked at him with gentle surprise.  
  
”You don’t like it?”  
”I… you don’t have to do it.”  
  
Ben rose his eyebrows.  
  
”I’m not doing it because I have to, but because I _want_ to. That is, if _you’d_ like me to…”  
  
The former first mate’s face was blushing – Ben had never imagined Billy blushing – and his eyes flickered in the light. He swallowed, looked suddenly insecure and then he sighed and, almost reluctantly, unbuttoned his trousers and turned his face away. Ben didn’t know what to make of the man’s reluctance to look at him – was it because he was a man or because it was Ben? – but it didn’t make him want this any less.  
  
He wrapped a hand around the swollen flesh, let his fingers touch the dark curls by the base and then, just to make the man understand he didn’t hesitate because of his sex, he swallowed him far down in one go and elicited something almost close to a whimper from the tense man. Ben didn’t care if he’d get the same treatment back or any release at all, he just wanted to taste the man, hear and feel him act like a human being of flesh and blood, just _once_ letting himself loose in pleasure and be nothing more than an _man_ if only ever so briefly.  
  
The musky scent, the taste of manliness and the rough fingers now tugging in his hair as Ben moved rhythmically, letting his lips tighten by the base, tongue swirl around the shaft and suckle the head gently, soft, almost boardering on teasing and the sounds falling from the man’s lips only made Ben more bold, more shameless in his moves and he brought a hand down his own trousers, tugging at his lenght as he worked Billy closer to the edge. He could hear the man bit back, swallow down something that, if released, would’ve been a loud shout as he came down Ben’s throat and Ben’s own seed spilled on the ground, wasted on unbarren dust instead of a woman’s womb and therefor condemned, but nevertheless a sweet relief.


	27. Chapter 27

If Ben had thought Billy would feel any need to talk about what was happening between them, he thought wrong. After they’d catched their breaths, Billy gently but still firmly, removed Ben from his lap and adjusted his clothes. He didn’t look at Ben, didn’t talk and when he’d put his belt back on he took another cup of weak ale from the jug, clearly waiting for Ben to do what he needed to look decent again. The whole business was awkward in more than one way, but they still had work to do and the sun had lowered enough for the worst heat to have passed, giving both of them an escape from a conversation neither of them seemed to know how to deal with.  
  
Billy didn’t ride off again, but took to the less pleasant task with preparing the skins from the last two days meals, while Ben sharpened their tools and heated the feathers from the plucked birds as well as others already eaten on previous days. They had no pillows in the house, just some grassfilled sacks serving as mattresses and sleep had been a rather lumpy and not always very comfortable business. The feathers, if they kept catching birds, would eventually fill a pillow. Ben still didn’t dare to think _pillows_ since the state Billy was in didn’t promise anything at this moment. Any sign of them being anything as in a unit was, if existing, swift and invisible as a dust of wind and they were – or at least had been – bloody pirates for most of their lives where seeking a moment of pleasure with a fellow mate didn’t have to mean a shit.  
  
For one being raised by agitators and once leading the resistance in Nassau, speaking for large numbers of men and women, Billy was a pretty silent company, rarely smiling and almost never laughing even back in their Nassau days. Here he did what Ben never saw him do during the resistance, taking pleasure in another person’s company in a bodily way, but he seemed to have lost his ability – or perhaps just the lust – for casual talk. It was clear he didn’t find Ben’s company or their moments of closeness annoying or intruding, apart from when their argue about Flint and Silver had made Ben leave in anger. The subject clearly pained the former first mate and Ben was the last to fault him for that. To be betrayed by his brothers, some of them whom he’d relied upon and been raised among like a second family before he reached manhood, was a hard blow. It wasn’t just a matter of trust among brothers of a band of outlaws, Ben had come to realise, but the trust of men replacing a lost family, caring for each other according to a mutual agreement: we are the black sheep of the world and if we stick together in thick and thin, we may not only survive but even carve out a place of our own.  
  
That was why Billy had not hesitated to shoot down his former brothers in the water, why he’d taken Madi as a hostage and why he’d been so determined to the point where it blinded him, to get rid of Flint. Civilization was the enemy but within the brotherhood, no one, not even a captain and certainly not a brother’s woman, stood above the common good for the crew. It was a very fair, very noble and just thought, but Ben had never been an idealist and even if the words he’d said to Billy about him not deserving to die as a dog despite what he’d done, when releasing him from the captivity were unpersonal, the motive wasn’t.   
  
Had it been anyone else but Billy in that room, Ben wouldn’t have risked his life or anything else of even slight importance for his sake. Freeing him hadn’t been something he’d thought through, he just knew he couldn’t bare the thought of… what? Seeing him dead? Captured? Hanged? Being partly to blame for the death of a brother? Not even when Billy had taken Madi captured and Silver was ready to risk the entire treasure, had Ben been able to regret his decision. And hadn’t Silver spared Billy’s life too, as well as Flint’s? Just as Flint and Billy had spared each others lives, as they both had spared Silver’s. It seemed to Ben that all the then still living parts of the crew, were alive only because they one time or another had chosen to spare a brother’s life, even if they’d had reasons to see him dead.   
  
These thoughts occupied the former pirate’s mind as he put the now pretty decent amount of feathers from Billy’s hunting to steam up in the kettle. It was a dirty work since the smell was pretty nasty and Ben put herbs among the feathers to make it better and the fact that he could make the work over a small fire outside, improved a lot.   
  
The small house wasn’t what one would call homey, but it wasn’t sternly either and Billy was, when not drenched in rum and bitterness, a cleanly man, for a pirate or whatever the fuck one would call him now. The ease which with Billy had decreased his intake of rum, told Ben the man hadn’t been so deep into the bottle as he’d first feared. After all, six months wasn’t enough time to become a drinker unable to stop. Ben had sailed with men being far worse than Billy in that matter and the fact Billy hadn’t tried to turn the house upside down in search for the hidden rum or went back to the harbour, was if not a certain then at least a promising sign.  
  
The warm afternoon turned into coolish evening as the sunset lit up the sky before nightfall with it’s yellow, pink and red colours, spreading the warm light all over the fields and as far as the eye could reach, Ben couldn’t help but feeling relieved the harbour laid far behind. He’d never been a very good sailor or fighter and the only time he’d truly longed for the sea, was in the cage in the Maroon camp, but he’d missed the sunsets more. He never saw all the colours in the cage.   
  
”Enjoying the view?”  
  
The first mate, once again, managed to scare him and the hard face looked almost as if he was sorry for it. Billy nodded at the fading sun.  
  
”Never liked sunsets.”  
”Why?”  
”Meant it was getting dark soon.”  
”Thought I was the one scared of the dark…”  
  
The reference to their first time in Nassau made Billy smile. Not the usual, hard and cold snear but a true smile, as if the words had brought back a happy memory.  
  
”After a while you weren’t scared anymore.”  
”True.”  
  
It was. It took some time but along with the comfort he found in not only his freedom, food and drink, but most of all the new brotherhood accepting him so easily as if he’d always belonged to them, had increased the number of times waking up at night shivering, not knowing if he was still in the cage or not. Sometimes Jacob Garrett, sometimes Dr. Howell or someone else who’s name now appeared lost to him, had brought comfort in form of a hand on shoulder, an comforting word or two but more than that the company. And more often than anyone, Billy had been the one coming close, offering the kind of silent understanding one who’d lived through his own share of blackest nightmares could give.  
  
”Why don’t you like them?”  
”Sunsets?”  
”Yeah.”   
  
Billy shrugged but his face was strained.  
  
”Sounds silly but it was the last thing I saw before I was brought down, inside the ship.”  
”The one where you were pressganged?”  
”Uh-huh. Was winter and it was an unusually mild one that year, so the Navy could… start the _recruting_ earlier.”  
”How old were you? I… forgot.”  
”Fourteen.”  
”I’m sorry.”  
  
Billy laughed.  
  
”Why? Wasn’t your doing and it didn’t happen to you so why should you be sorry?”  
”Because it’s still sad. And a fucking evil thing to do to a child.”  
”Good thing I’m no longer a child then.   
  
The voice was hard but sounded fragile. Like a shell, protecting something very vulnerable and Ben once again saw the unmaking of Captain Flint, the reborn of James McGraw for his inner view and along with that picture, the image of two other men. One with now ashen blonde hair and the unimaginable surprise turned into brightest joy as the remains of Captain Fint fell off the ginger as he held onto the no longer lost love of his life. Then the other, the dark curls not able to conceal the torment, the price Silver in that moment didn’t know he’d just paid.  
  
Now the hard, high walls around the plantation protected the fragile, the vulnerable thing so called civilised men but not a lousy orphan and thief, pirate, murderer and scheamer could find it in his heart to destroy, mock or manipulate. In this moment, Billy and Silver reminded a lot more of each other than any of them would ever know. And that realisation, perhaps together with the whole weird turmoil of feelings, thoughts and memories swirling around his mind, perhaps just the weariness of the day or perhaps, perhaps, perhapse entirely something else, made Ben Gunn cry. And the other man who was no longer a child, just put a burly arm around Ben’s shoulders, once again offering a silent comfort that didn’t need any words.


	28. Chapter 28

Ben couldn’t really remind himself when he’d stopped crying or if Billy had said anything. He just found himself almost asleep while standing, leaned heavily against the other man’s chest and the sun had long sinced faded. He felt strong arms around him, not lifting him from the ground but clearly stopping him from sinking down to it. When did he suddenly become so tired?  
__  
”It’s getting late. We should take to bed.”  
  
Billy’s voice sounded unusually soft in the darkness and he pulled Ben back inside as if leading a small child who’d fallen asleep in the midst of a story and only reluctantly admitted being tired. Inside, Ben kicked his shoes off and threw the vest in a corner before sinking down on the sacks with a sigh.  
  
”Tomorrow we’ll have pillows… If you’re… staying…”  
  
The man didn’t answer but removed his belt, boots and shirt and laid down beside Ben, pulling him closer than necessairy, too close but according to whom? Ben was so tired he didn’t even manage to get worried, he just snuggled into the other man’s warmth without thinking and before Billy had any chance to react, Ben was fast asleep. Billy laid awake a while longer, listening to the soft snoring against his chest and tried to ask himself why exactly he’d ended up here, in this part of the world and this house with this particular man sleeping like a child in his arms.  
  
The easy answer was because Ben had made him to. Not forced but not really asked either. It had been a strange kind of ultimatum Billy’d accepted because… yes, why? Because he had no one else left to ask for him, was the hard but true answer and Billy wasn’t able to lie that much to himself to deny it. The other reason was because out of all his former brothers, Ben hadn’t betrayed him. Billy may be a bitter man on the certain road towards a drinker’s death in a distant and depressing future, but he didn’t forget such things.  
  
Truth was, Billy couldn’t really remember when he’d had another human being, man or woman, in his arms like this, if he ever had. He’d never cared for whores and since he’d been with the crew a long time and already proved his worth in battle and in the riggings when he finally visited a brothel the first time, his brothers didn’t seem to care about the fact that he didn’t engage in that kind of company very often after the initiation. It wasn’t the girls fault, Billy just failed to see what all the fuss was about. He’d been with men too, later on in Tortuga, had his cock sucked and realised he prefered the scraping of stubble, the larger hands around his hips and the amount of discretion the molly boys offered compared to the girls, but he’d never really been intimate with another man and fact was Billy’d been so successful in _lack_ of fantasies, he’d barely given the idea of two men copulating a thought.  
  
Ben mumbled something in his sleep and Billy obliviously stroke his back. A reflex, nothing more, and he looked at the brighthaired man in his arms, felt how smooth the skin felt under his hands, how the scent of wild herbs and sunlight seemed to stick on the long hair and remind Billy of the sweet scent of Idelle, the woman who, if he remembered her correctly, could probably rule the entire Caribbean more efficiant than any fucking king from the old world. Whores were practical women and not wanting to sleep with them, didn’t mean Billy didn’t respect them. Especially those who, like Idelle, were both smart and clean and served far better use in more important matters than serving another horny bastard between the sheets.  
  
The man in his arms was different. Billy followed lines on the sunkissed skin with his fingers, traced them softly up and down, trying to connect them to a memory, any memory, of a man or woman in the past, but either he’d forgotten about them or just never experienced it before. The man had cried. Not from Billy’s story, Ben wasn’t soft in that matter and most of the men they’d met throughout the years had less than happy backgrounds. No, whatever it was that had made the man cry, it wasn’t over a boy’s misfortune.  
  
Ben’s story about Flint, Silver and this man Thomas Hamilton, had been spinning around Billy’s head ever since that evening, but it wasn’t those three men who occupied his thoughts, but how Ben had looked and sounded while telling it. It seemed to Billy that no matter if the story was actually true, _Ben_ most certainly thought it was and for some reason that story had made him come looking for Billy. He’d not said it aloud, but not _all_ of Billy’s mind had been marinating into uselessness in rum and despite Ben’s stream of hard words since their reunion at the tavern, it was very clear that the story of Flint, Silver and Hamilton had had a huge, almost absurdly so, impact on the man.  
  
Billy kept sliding his fingers over the spine, not being able to stop and he wasn’t sure he wanted to. The man had curled up in his arms like a cat, like Betsy used to do on Randall’s chest. The former first mate sighed. Life as a pirate was far less romantic and exciting than people usually thought, and at the same time not as loveless. They were no monsters, they had their needs and not all of those were about rum, gold and fucking. His brothers had had lovers, mostly women but also men and they didn’t treat them like animals more than so called decent men would. During his long years at sea, Billy had seen brothers fall in love, hurried to meet their lovers and sometimes returning with faces cleared of all distress and weariness, sometimes twisted into sorrow, hate or heartbreak and you never talked about the reason, just offered some more to drink and anything that would give the brother some rest from his heart.  
  
Billy had not experienced that but was he really that different? Was _Flint_ really that different? Pride but also heartbreak had made Charles Vane turn on Eleanor Guthrie. Love had made Silver risk the treasure, the only thing he’d ever cared for, to get Madi back. And how was it with the rumour of the men in Vane’s crew that Anne Bonny had slain for using Max? The rumour that said Vane didn’t care, not because he had feelings for Bonny or gave a shit about Max, but because he could understand Bonny’s motives.  
  
Yes, Billy had seen enough men and women risking everything for someone they cared for, men and women of the sea, hard and brutal, greedy and selfish, forced to bury their hearts because such delicate things didn’t survive long in this world.  
  
He tried to picture Flint before him, how the man was long before Silver, the treasure and the war. Aloof, dangerous and unpredictable, never taking part in the fellowship onboard, always on his watch for treason and somehow always managing to get away with the most horrendous acts. In league with Silver he was invincible, until he realised that man was even more dangerous than himself. Not because he was smarter or stronger, but because he was both liked and feared, while Flint always remaind only the latter.  
  
What Ben had told him about Flint’s true motives, the reunion with his supposed lover and how that one seemingly selfless act from Silver had caused a rift between him and Madi, had seemed so strange but also too bold to just be a lie. Men and women of all kind, lousy pirates and whores, feared captains and powerful queens, former slaves and gold shitting nobles, had a place in this particular kind of story Billy had heard many times but never seen himself as anything more than an audience to, never fully having a name for the source of the headless risks people like Vane, Bonny and Flint were ready to take.  
  
Ben’s motives was a whole other matter and Billy wasn’t sure he wanted to dig any further into them. The man slept peacefully and the closeness, the comfort so openly offered was hard to resist, even harder to abandon completely. And the former first mate allowed his tense lips to rest in the hair, allowed this hidden closeness far away from judging eyes, protected by the solitude and wild landscape, by the darkness and stillness of the night. He hid it from himself, from the depths within he didn’t want to visit, the buried need he didn’t even want himself to see, because in Billy’s experience, what a man needs the most is also the thing others will try to steal from him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so happy for all who're following this story, every kudo makes me giggle with happiness and so do comments! Don't hesitate to leave one if you want to, because comments make fanfic authors purr like Betsy in Randall's arms <3


	29. Chapter 29

The man once again avoided him, shut himself like a clam. Ben didn’t comment it, didn’t show impatience or irritation. The night he’d cried in the man’s arms wasn’t spoken of and Billy didn’t seek any further intimacy. They shared the mattress and the large man used to let Ben sleep in his embrace, used to be gentle during the moments before sleep took them but didn’t let hands slip and after four nights of that sleeping arrangement, waking up hard, aching and wet every morning, Ben wanted to scream of frustration. The fact that he could feel the other man’s hardness pressed against his body didn’t make it any easier. Exactly what did the man want?  
  
One hot afternoon, Ben went down to the bay. He needed a swim, needed to rinse his clothes too and he took a piece of soap with him, undressed behind the bushes and enjoyed the soothing water while scrubbing dirt, dust and dried skin from his body. He swam around for a while, stretching his body and felt the lightness of the water carry him floating on the surface. The sun warmed his face, chest and groin, his thighs and upright toes, making him feel light and alive.  
  
He floated around for a while and then took to rinse his hair. Then, without turning around, he realised Billy was there. He didn’t see him, didn’t have to, he just knew. Ben kept his back at the beach and rinsed the bubbles from his head, slowly, as if he’d not noticed the spectator and thought he was alone. He then scrubbed his arms, his thighs and in a way boardering on teasing, let his hand slip downs his cleft, washing it thoroughly. Without really thinking, Ben slipped a finger inside himself, moved it in and out almost casually and then stopped to go back on rinsing the rest of the soap from his skin.  
  
He could feel the other man’s gaze on him so strong it was almost physical and Ben turned around, not enough to face him or even see him, keeping his eyes down as if he’d just turned to find a better footing. He started washing his belly, his groin and took his sweet time soaping and rinsing his cock and balls, seemingly unbothered by their state and in no hurry what so ever. Ben had to make an effort not to smile and reveal that he’d discovered being watched and he left the water, still rock hard and laid down on his back in the grass, not ten feet from the other man’s ”hiding place” next to a large tree.  
  
Ben spread his hair out like a fan on the grass to dry, closed his eyes and started to touch himself. If Billy knew Ben had discovered him, it didn’t make him leave and Ben decided to push it a little further. He wetted two fingers on his left hand, lifted his hips a little and pushed inside. Still a little slick from the soap and water, his fingers slid in easily and Ben started penetrating himself, lifting and lowering his hips with feet firmly on the ground and the right hand stroking his cock. He pretended it was the other man’s hands, his long, thick fingers pounding inside him, rough and desperate, the other man’s tight fist around his cock as he widened his hole. Ben forgot about the real spectator, mind all focused on an imaginary Billy Bones’ hard, swollen cock, thick and bloodfilled taking the finger’s place and fucking him into oblivion.  
  
He spilled on the grass with an unrestrained groan before turning to his stomach and spreading out to dry his still wet back in the sun. When he turned his head towards the trees, Billy was no longer there. Ben smiled to himself. The aloof, former first mate wasn’t the only one who could make a man confused.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so happy for all who're following this story, every kudo makes me giggle with happiness and so do comments! Don't hesitate to leave one if you want to, because comments make fanfic authors purr like Betsy in Randall's arms <3


	30. Chapter 30

”You did that on purpose.”  
”What?”  
”You know exactly what.”  
  
Billy’s voice was dark, strained and Ben turned around from the fireplace where he’d just put some wood for the supper. They’d avoided each other since the event by the bay and Ben was sick of the game they played and equally sick of Billy’s unability to speak his mind of anything important. For him to accuse Ben of beating about the bush, was nothing but ridiculous. Ben wiped the coaldust from his hands on the trousers and turned around.  
  
”I’m not ashamed of taking matters in my own hands, Billy and I wasn’t the one peeping.”  
”You did it because you knew I was there.”  
”Really?”  
  
Ben moved closer to the man, challenging but with arms crossed.  
  
”How come you didn’t leave then, huh? Of all the places here, you just _had_ to choose the one with that view? Don’t fucking blame me for noticing you sneaking.”  
  
Billy was blushing and Ben took another step forward.  
  
”If you didn’t like the view, all you had to do was leave. And speaking of _purpose_ … you were crossing that border first, if I’m not mistaken and I’m sick of you acting like you want to fuck me one moment and then like I’m some sort of plague in the next. You’re acting like a petulent child, Billy, and right now I’d rather tan your ass than fuck it. Maybe that could make that thick head of yours finally slip out!”

He stopped and for a moment they just starred at each other, Ben breathed heavily, heart beating too fast and before he had a chance to move out of reach, the former first mate grabbed his arms in a bruising grip and threw him on the floor. He sank down, pulled Ben over his lap and started smacking him, hard and fast.  
  
More angry and embarressed than hurt, Ben tried to wriggle away, spitting and cursing, but the man was too strong, too determined and when Ben managed to hit him in the face by simply tossing his head and back up and back, he pressed Ben harder down, threw a long, muscled leg over the folds of his knees and locked him in the embarressing position. Without taking notice of Ben’s curses, he pulled the trousers down and continued spanking the now glowing cheeks with the same determination he’d done all tasks when he was still a first mate and a man people looked up to. He wasn’t mild, the slaps _really_ hurt and didn’t show any sign of stopping, despite Ben’s spitting and cursing.  
  
But at one point, the pain simply ran over whatever embarressment and self-control Ben had, and the curses and demands turned into beggings and hot tears. Only when Ben had been screaming and crying in his humiliating position long enough for Billy’s liking, he stopped and by then Ben was a sobbing mess over his lap, too shocked to compose himself or even move. Billy didn’t remove him, didn’t adjust his clothes or even talked. Instead he kept Ben like that, softly squeezing his neck and stroking his back as Ben cried.  
    
They remained like that, as Ben’s tears started to decrease – he still wasn’t sure if it was the pain, the embarressment, the anger or simply pure shock that made him weep like this – and the hand who’d tanned his ass red or worse stroke his lower back tenderly, soft like a lover.  
  
”You needed that.”  
  
Billy didn’t sound scornful, angry or lecturing. His voice was calm and tired, almost abject if not for the slight stroke of remorse.  
  
”I know I should probably ask for forgiveness or something, but I’m not going to.”  
”I should slice you up for fishing bait…”  
  
Removing himself was still impossible, due to the pain, Billy’s firm grip and the sudden powerlessness taking over Ben’s sore, limp body. If so the whole English Navy had been in his heels, Ben would not have been able to move. Instead, Billy lifted him carefully and put him down on the mattress. The man searched through Ben’s items and found the vial of aloe used for burns. He poured a fairly large amount of it in his palm and started to rub it all over the glowing cheeks. Ben hissed and Billy chuckled.  
  
”I bet you’d rather had me fuck your ass instead, right?”  
”Don’t flatter yourself.”  
”Then stop pushing me, Ben. You looked good on my lap and I can put you there again if I you need it.”  
  
The rubbing hurt but the aloe was soothing and the anger Ben felt decreased surprisingly fast, even though he should be more than furious. In another time and place, he’d killed men for far less personal reasons than this. He’d not be able to sit for some days and wearing trousers would be a most uncomfortable business. Billy kept rubbing far longer after the damn ointment had sunk in, but this time, Ben knew better than teasing and he laid pliant on the mattress, waiting for the humiliation to stop burning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so happy for all who're following this story, every kudo makes me giggle with happiness and so do comments! Don't hesitate to leave one if you want to, because comments make fanfic authors purr like Betsy in Randall's arms <3


	31. Chapter 31

At first Ben feared the man would take advantage of his condition. Billy’s hand had left him severely bruised and Ben could barely make it to the privy without shaking from pain. He had to walk there barely covered by his shirt and sitting down even for a short moment was highly uncomfortable but at least the former first mate didn’t mock him, not once. Instead, Ben found himself in the very strange and to be honest quite embarressing situation of being cared for.  
  
For some reason, Billy seemed to think this had made them even and considering the state of Ben’s ass, he really didn’t want to confront the man. At least not until he was less sore. Ben spent the days on the mattress, sleeping every now and then because he  was still exhausted from the whole business and to his surprise, he found that he slept really well.  
  
Every morning and evening, Billy insisted on rubbing the ointment over Ben’s ass and since it worked and Ben knew he wouldn’t be allowed doing it himself, he simply let the man fold down the sheet and accepted the moment of embarrassment for the greater good, being the soon recovery of his poor skin. He’d pushed the man too far, Ben admitted that at least to himself, and the highly unexpected form of retribution wasn’t one he wanted to receive ever again. Strangely enough, Billy seemed less tense now and had lost all signs of harshness and scorn in his face. He still looked hard and confused, insecure and tired,  as if he’d let out all his steam by tanning Ben’s ass.  
  
Billy was a fairly decent cook and served Ben sturdy food the following days, to help him regain his strenght, made sure he had enough blankets and put his own pillow behind Ben’s back to keep him from turning on his sore side in sleep. During nights, Billy had Ben sleeping on his arm, facing him and even though he never let his hands wonder or rubbed against him, it felt extremely intimate. The words from the former first mate after he’d spanked him, still echoed in Ben’s ears: _You needed that._ As if it was him, not Billy, who needed to let go of control.  
  
But it was Billy who pulled him close in sleep, Billy who grasped for Ben’s arms and hands, who digged blunt nails into Ben’s shoulders as if holding onto a cliff. One morning when Ben woke up first and tried to move the burly arm from his chest to leave for the privy, Billy’s grasp became harder and Ben had to whisper soft words in the man’s ear, ensurements to make him let go. The very moment Ben returned to the mattress, Billy pulled him back into his arms again, in an almost desperate manner and Ben let him because something had changed and he wasn’t sure of what.  
  
The nightly closeness wasn’t actually sexual, even if it was far from brotherly. It felt like Billy tried to keep him from leaving, or holding onto him to not be taken away, as if Ben had been the riggings on a ship in storm and the man’s only chance to save the ship and survive the night. It was desperate, a clingy embrace and for some reason it aroused tenderness in Ben. He would let his hand stroke in circles over Billy’s shoulders, let it wander all the way down to where the loop of his trousers would’ve been but never further, always the same, predictable pattern across the warm skin, never touching his most intimate parts and strangely enough no man’s or woman’s touch had ever felt more intimate to Ben than this. And the name for it still refused to appear.  
  
During the days, Billy took care of him in the same way he’d do if Ben had been ill or injured while they were brothers in a crew and when the shock and worst pain had been eased, Ben returned to his own duties one day without a word. He had every reason to beat the other man senseless and could easily have done it by simply letting him have more rum – the first mate still didn’t know where the hiding place was – and even more surprising than the gentle care for his sore skin, was the fact that Billy didn’t try to force him to show the hiding place for the rum, even if he was clearly still a bit shaky from the loss. He’d been forced to raison the intakes during Ben’s time in bed and one afternoon when Billy was out hunting, Ben poured half of the usual daily amount in a cup and put on the table for him. He then took a huge gulp himself, if so only for the still lingering soreness and humiliation before he put it back in it’s hiding place and kept working on the fishing net.  
  
By time for supper, Billy returned with a couple of rabbits he skinned and hung, since Ben had already made a stew from the stocks of dried peas and salted pork he’d bought on the journey. He brought the two stools to the fire and served up the stew in two bowls along with some dry bread and two cups of the weak ale. As always, the ate in silence and when Ben handed the other man the meager raison of his fancy, the hard eyes seemed a little softer, not so darkened and he accepted the cup with a low, almost soft _thank you_.  
  
It had been quite many weeks since the weaning off had started and even though Billy was still far from the composed and balanced man Ben had came to know during the resistance, he was clearly getting better and probably felt it himself. Out here, he had no other company than Ben and the wild animals, but he didn’t show any signs of restlessness. He seemed almost content with his situation, probably because he felt it was beneficial for him for now, not only in terms of mere survival. The surroundings were peaceful, didn’t remind of Flint or Silver, the resistance, the maroons or the countless schemes, betrayals and dead brothers from their previous life. Billy could’ve left any day, but didn’t.  
  
As darkness fell and they’d finished their supper, Ben suddenly shivered, probably just a rest from the tension the brusque treatment by the former first mate’s hand, but the man noticed it and without a word, he rose and fetched one of the blankets on their shared mattress and draped it over Ben’s shoulders. Ben could feel the large hands rub fast but gently over his arms and back to create warmth and the gesture was so familiar but not connected with this life, but another one laying more than twenty years behind them, back in the long since faded days of childhood where their mothers would try to make some of the English and Scottish coldness go away.  
  
It was a touch of necessity, filling a very impersonal and innocent need any human being could have and therefor understand. Easy to give and take. But Billy’s hands were shaking and not from cold or lack of rum and Ben could only pretend not noticing it, despite they both knew he did, and feel the warmth coming back, easing the tension in his muscles and he wanted to talk, wanted to scream at the impossible man that he didn’t understand him, didn’t know how to interpret his actions and that he’d not thought it would be like this when he’d went out searching for him. In fact, he’d not had any clear thought of it at all, only that strange feeling, the unnamed force pushing him away, along, across and always, always back to this one man. Irrational, blind and impossible to ignore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so happy for all who're following this story, every kudo makes me giggle with happiness and so do comments! Don't hesitate to leave one if you want to, because comments make fanfic authors purr like Betsy in Randall's arms <3


	32. Chapter 32

He couldn’t sleep. The air was clear and he was tired from the day, but sleep wouldn’t come and Ben carefully left the mattress without waking Billy who slept soundly. He went outside and pulled the nightair deep into his lungs. The sky was dark and full of stars Ben no longer had to use for navigation, only for seeing and moving in the darkness. What was it Silver had said… _They paint the world full of shadows and then tell their children to stay close to the light. Their light. Their reasons, their judgments. Because in the darkness, there be dragons. But it isn't true. We can prove that it isn't true. In the dark, there is discovery, there is possibility, there is freedom._  
  
It wasn’t his words, for once the man with the silver tongue used the words of another and even though he never named the source of them, as he repeated the words for Ben in one of his brief moments of talking on the road back from Savannah. The journey to the place had been hard, not in terms of weather and winds, but because of Captain Flint who, even though seemingly accepting his fate so to speak he didn’t try to run away, had been in a state of pretended indifference, unreachable and John Silver’s efforts to keep his spirits up, to keep the man calm despite all the hard words and cold distance was painful to witness.  
  
Somewhere on that journey, during one of the moments Silver had been alone with the Captain, those words had been spoken and when they’d left the man behind, in a way a prisoner but perhaps also more free than he’d ever been at open sea, back in his lover’s arms, Silver had repeated them… _In the dark, there is discovery, there is possibility, there is freedom…_ Darkness was the time for ill deeds, for shameful secrets because decent men and women were asleep at night and couldn’t discover anything evil except in dreams. Only when they slept, their minds were free to discover without shame or fear of punishment.  
  
”Ben?”  
  
He turned around quickly and the man hidden by nightly shadows held his hands up.  
  
”Didn’t mean to scare you. Can’t sleep?”  
”Needed some air. Didn’t mean to wake you.”  
”Well… will you come back to bed?”  
”You miss me?”  
  
He’d not teased the man since the tanning of his ass and he tensed, remembering the unpredictability he didn’t want to wake up. Billy didn’t answer, just reached his hand out and Ben took it, baffled, and followed him back inside, back to their quarters and laid down again. Billy stretched out beside him, facing him and his dark eyes gleamed in the room. Slowly, with eyes closed, Ben put a callous hand on the burly arm and brushed with his thumb over the skin.  
  
He didn’t smile, didn’t challenge the man, just caressed him softly in the darkness. Billy didn’t do anything at first, he just kept breathing with his face strained and Ben could feel the shivers within the man’s body again, like a creature in the last days of winter slumber, slowly coming to life from warming sun but still not awake. The insecurity Ben had taken for simple stubborness was so intense he could almost touch it physically, like a thick fog of fear going years and years back and Ben had a vision of a loss of belonging, a boy crying for his mother and father in the darkness, the same boy learning tears were useless and swallowed the pain and sorrow, concealing the wound with regained freedom and the kindness of his new brothers, who would help him get strong, stronger than he’d ever been and more free than the men who’d ended his childhood in such a brutal way.  
  
The image was only an act of his mind’s ability to picture too many what if:s and Ben forced the imagined crying boy away from thought and returned to the now, where a real man of flesh and blood cried in his hair, the muted sound of a sorrow so deep one couldn’t see the end of it. It was the sound of a man who’d not cried in years, who’d learned not to, to a point where he’d almost forgotten how. It was Billy, it was Silver, it was Flint and all the men the world had forced to be hard, too hard to dare reaching for softness ever again, because they’d learned that such delicate things like joy, peace and love weren’t for men like them. They were monsters, unwanted and despised long before anyone of them heeded the call of the black flag for the first time. Men of the darkness, the only place their tears, their longings and unspoken desires could take form and come to life. And no dragons would be there to scare them back into the merciless chains of light. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so happy for all who're following this story, every kudo makes me giggle with happiness and so do comments! Don't hesitate to leave one if you want to, because comments make fanfic authors purr like Betsy in Randall's arms <3


	33. Chapter 33

He woke up while it was still dark, with the other man’s hands not where they should be. Or maybe exactly where he wanted them. Billy was still asleep but his large palms had wandered and found their way down between Ben’s thighs and over his ass. It was such an awkward position Ben first thought the man was awake, but the soft snores and the heaviness of the other man’s body spoke against that.  
  
Having a hand on ones ass was one thing, but Billy had wormed himself around Ben’s cock, clothed but still. It wasn’t uncomfortable but unnerving and Ben didn’t want any swift movements from Billy while the man literally had him by the balls. Instead, he allowed himself to dwell in the moment, just the fact that he had a man in his bed again. A man who touched him, who had a beautiful, strong body and an impressive cock. Fuck… Ben bit his lip. He’d missed being fucked, missed it more than doing the fucking even though he’d never admitted that to any of his casual lovers in the past.  
  
The submission in the role of being fucked could be tolerated and enjoyed but never openly prefered. It was too female, too weak. Among pirates it wasn’t as strict, of course. Men were far more shameless regarding their fancies on the account and Ben had taken pleasure in the role as receiver just like some other men, never seen as lesser because of it and it had been a long time since he’d felt that particular act so despised in the light and the source of so much pleasure in the dark. Suddenly he felt a movement, a curling of fingers, tentative and insecure at his groin and Ben couldn’t stand the tension. He let out a sigh against the man’s chest and the hand immediately moved.  
  
”Please… don’t stop…”  
  
It was a whisper and Ben’s heart was racing, not knowing exactly what line he’d crossed with his plead, only that the hand came back, light and asking at first, then finally, finally opening buttons, searching through layers of fabric and taking Ben’s aching member, stroking it slowly as if he still wasn’t sure he wanted this. Ben had his forehead pressed against the other man’s chest and the heart behind all the hard layers was beating fast, fast like a very small animal’s. _So much fear._ The tension left Ben and he pressed a gentle kiss on the other man’s pounding heart.  
  
”I want this… Billy, please… _please_ touch me.”  
  
The man heeded the plead, the up until now unspoken desire Ben had hoped Billy would discover without direct words, but hadn’t. The palm was rough but not the grip and the strokes not careless or rushed, but slow, purposeful and teasing, serving to make Ben harder as blood kept rushing south and filling him more by every promising stroke.  
  
He was moaning now, panting against the broad chest and pressed himself closer, wanted less space, more heat and he grinded his thigh between Billy’s legs, feeling the bulge there, hot and heavy under the strained fabric. Billy let go of his cock, but not in disdain, only to unfasten his own trousers and let his erection spring free. Without hesitation, he wetted his palm and took them both in hand, rubbing them hard together. Ben listened in amazement to the shameless moaning from the former first mate, unleashed sounds of pleasure as he worked them both to release, hot and sticky white pleasure smeared out by Billy’s hand all over both their members, staining clothes and blankets as they catched their breaths, as Ben hissed from sensitivity and Billy let out something close to a mewl when it became too much and they had to move hands.  
  
They were sticky and wet, the mattress smelled from semen and sweat, from anxiety and release and Ben turned around, not caring the slightest about getting his trousers back in place, he just wanted to be held, to be allowed sweet sleep just as they were in this moment. He could feel the now soft cock against his ass, no fabrics between them and Billy out his arm under Ben’s head, spooned him and stroke his belly in slow circles. No words, no more tension and they fell asleep again, pressed together in the last hours of the night on it’s way to give in for the daylight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so happy for all who're following this story, every kudo makes me giggle with happiness and so do comments! Don't hesitate to leave one if you want to, because comments make fanfic authors purr like Betsy in Randall's arms <3


	34. Chapter 34

The way Billy had manhandled him for the teasing had made Ben less bold in his moves. It was clear that the man in one way or another, to at least some extent desired him and in the cover of darkness Billy had even showed signs of actual tenderness. What was also clear, was that the man didn’t appreciated any advances from Ben in daylight. That didn’t mean their touches stopped, only that all initiatives had to be Billy’s. And as with all other things concerning Billy and this particular matter, it was never made into words.  
  
They’d crossed a line, so much was clear, and Billy controlled it’s boarders with the eyes of a hawk and ears of a fox, overly sensitive for anything that suggested he wasn’t in complete control of this. Ben could understand it though, since he’d been the one making Billy leave his old life behind and miserable or not, it had been a life of the man’s own choosing. Here he was no longer in control of his drinking or company even if he was free to go and could return to his path downhills should he really want to. Ben didn’t thought that was Billy’s wish. Not anymore.  
  
They spent their days fishing, hunting, collecting edible herbs, not talking very much and they fell into a rhythm of time much like at sea or during the resistance. Not even remotely close to several of the tasks they’d performed back then, but their hidden cottage with the rich nature providing for them in plenty as they lived their lives as some kind of settlers, not missing the sea, Nassau or other people. The freedom in this simple life seemed to give Billy more peace and sense of purpose than the days of the resistance ever had.  
  
Their evenings were calm and silent as well. Without really talking about it, they’d devided the work between them fairly equal and Billy did the hunting and skinning, while Ben did the cooking and whatever handiwork needed to make the house more of a home. The nights meant an increasing closeness, rough hands and strained gasps, but things never went further and Ben didn’t have the slightest idea if Billy wanted to or not.  
  
One day, Ben took the horse and carriage to town, leaving Billy to do both their duties while he ran some errends. Worried Billy would want to come, Ben had already prepared arguments but to his surprise, the man didn’t seem interested in going.  
  
”Have no business there you can’t handle yourself. Would be good if you could get your hands on some clothes.”  
  
He pinched the now more than worned shirt and trousers, roughly mended and stained from aminal’s blood, fire and mudd. Ben nodded.   
  
”I will. Think I have a pretty good idea of your measures.”  
  
For some reason, that made them both blush and Ben quickly went to gear the horse. He had a good amount of coin in his purse and the rest was well-hidden – he’d moved it to a new place along with the rum – and needed the carriage to bring some of the goods back. Billy patted the horse as Ben climbed up and took the reins.  
  
”See you tonight then.”  
”Be safe.”  
  
The farewell words were unusual, strange even and Ben just nodded and went on his way, not really knowing what the proper answer would be to the suddenly revealed concern – or what it meant.


	35. Chapter 35

The small portion of rum was left by the fire and Billy gritted his teeth and turned his back on it. He didn’t know where Ben kept the stock and to his genuine surprise, he didn’t feel much interest in looking for it. He’d never indulged himself much in drinking until the failed attempt with the treasure, Flint and Silver. Never liked the way it clouded his mind and he’d seen a lot of men end up dead simply because they said the wrong thing efter too many drinks. Rum had only started to interest him after he’d ended up alone. Now, he wasn’t.  
  
The strange game of power they played with each other, was something Billy had never experienced before. It was completely different from any other battle he’d fought with Flint, Silver, Vane, Rogers or Guthrie. It didn’t remind him of the kind of plots, schemes and fights to gain power among the men or keep them in line, or of the silent and watchful way to use your seemingly weakness to appear unthreatening and uninteresting enough to be left alone.  
  
This, how ever, was entirely something else.  
  
To begin with, they’d always gotten along well. Really well. Billy couldn’t recall any fights or even serious disagreements between them from their time together in Flint’s crew. On the contrary, Ben had quickly become his confidant, like a breath of fresh air with his focus on survival and complete lack of interest in schemes. It seemed as if, unlike the others, Ben could listen to every word Flint, Silver or Billy said, without falling for it. Jacob was good in his own way, but when it came to a second opinion, Billy would always choose to turn to Ben.  
  
Furthermore, to be completely honest, the way Billy had reacted to Ben’s teasing may have felt embarressing for the man, but it didn’t seem to make Ben feel less powerful in the least, but rather… excited. On some level, Billy knew he could easily have responded by pulling off, strike him down or simply leave or why not kill Billy in his sleep after the quite brutal spanking, but he hadn’t. And he’d allowed Billy to show care. Of course, Billy’d not once mocked him but rather used Ben’s temporarily convalescence as an opportunity to create balance between them, instead of taking more power. This wasn’t Nassau and Billy couldn’t see what he’d gain from hurting and humiliating Ben. They had reached some form of balance, strange as it was, and Billy was also keenly aware of just how much he had to thank Ben for.  
  
The evening came and the rum was still untouched, as Billy kept himself occupied with carving out branches to a fence. He didn’t want to admit the small but noticable tug in his belly, reminding him of the possibility Ben wouldn’t return. Getting too close, caring too much about a brother on a personal level, was equal to make yourself vulnerable, especially in a pirate crew and Billy wasn’t used to the kind of feelings Ben stirred up inside him.  
  
As the evening slowly turned more and more late and no Ben could be seen, Billy shamefully found himself imagining unbottoning Ben’s trousers and putting him over his lap for another lesson in how Billy felt about testing his patience. The image of it, how ever, had a very different effect than Billy’d expected and instead of increasing his own power of mind, he unbottoned his own trousers, shoved a hand inside them and allowed his mind to dwell in the shameful image of Ben laying with his ass bare naked over his lap, buttocks turning red and hot and his cock unvoluntarily pressing against Billy’s thigh as he struggled to get loose.  
  
The memory of was far, far stronger than Billy’d realised – or wanted to admit – and in an embarressing short amount of time, he spilled on the floor, still irritated for Ben’s delay, but surprisingly less tense. It was a shameful thing to use the image of another man’s humiliation for your own pleasure like this, but at this point, most of Billy’s ideals had gone up in smoke and the only thing left for him to follow now as the rum was out of reach - at least the amount required to get drunk - was to temporarily accept this very strange situation and the emotions it brought up.


	36. Chapter 36

The errand had taken longer than expected and it was dark when Ben finally came back. It had been a tiresome trip but he’d managed to get all the things he was after and so the quite long journey with the carriage had been successful. Of course, the look on Billy’s face when he came to greet him – which in it’s own was a bit strange – made it clear that the wayward first mate was less than impressed with the delay.  
  
”You’re late.”  
”I know and I’m sorry. It wasn’t my intention.”  
  
Ben climbed down from the carriage, he felt quite tired, and started to unload the goods. Billy helped, but his face was very tense and Ben, more than a little surprised, realised he’d been worried and he had the same expression as when he’d lost control and hit him. Tired or not, Ben had no chance against an angry Billy at this point and he used the time it took to move the goods inside and get the horse what it needed, to think.  
  
The rum he’d left for Billy was, to Ben’s great surprise and admiration, untouched, the chores were all done and there was a fire going. Despite the teasing, the loss of control of the rum and all the truths Ben had thrown in his face, Billy hadn’t done any of all the possible things a pirate of his size could’ve inflicted on Ben to cause torture and death, but had responded to it by trying to turn his life around and the admiration Ben felt for that, in this moment knew no limits, which lead to a decision anyone would call right down mad. Well, anyone who didn’t know Billy Bones as well as Ben Gunn.  
  
Before Billy had returned inside, Ben went out again to do something he’d not done since he was a young lad and not in his wildest dreams thought he’d had to do ever again. He looked around the trees and bushes near the cabin, found a suiting one and cut of some lithe branches, quickly tying them to a rod before he returned inside, praying to God he’d read the man right.  
  
Billy was walking back and forth by the fire, clearly really angry and he turned around, ready to throw a fit of some sort when he saw the switch Ben reached him. Whatever he was about to say – or more likely scream – it didn’t came out but he took the switch, visibly stunned, and let Ben lead him to one of the stools Ben had made and sat down. Ben removed his belt, dropped his trousers and before the former bosun managed to speak a single word, Ben bent over and laid down over his knee.  
  
For a moment, there was silence. Ben could feel the hesitation, the way Billy tried to make up his mind and the strange excitement the situation woke up inside him. Just as Ben thought the angry bosun wouldn’t go through with it, a biting strike fell on his skin and caught by surprise, a moan left him. The switch was very effective and Billy was clearly no stranger to it. He used his left arm to keep Ben firmly in place, but the strikes were, however very stinging and definately painful, not of the bruising, uncontrolled kind.  
  
When Billy stopped, Ben imagined his ass probably looked like it had been skinned, and he’d barely been able to stop himself from squirming and begging Billy to stop. His skin felt very raw and hot and he was breathing heavily as Billy loosened his grip around him and let him stand. Ben started to rearranged his clothes and hid his blushing face by turning away, when Billy took his arm.  
  
”Wait.”  
  
He sounded calm, almost tender, as if all his previous anger had left him and Ben dropped his trousers again, leaned onto the table and waited while Billy rubbed in some ointment on the sore skin. The breaths on his back were strained but heated and Ben didn’t need to look to see that the man was hard.  
  
Ben knew what he wanted, what they both desperately _needed_ , but in order to make Billy cross that line, he needed some very careful help, and part of that was to feel in control again. The spanking had increased the heat in Ben’s belly, and he was painfully hard, standing in this very exposed and vulnerable position as Billy’s large hands rubbed his glowing buttocks, far longer than needed. He squeezed them, massaged them in circles and then he oiled a finger and shoved it inside Ben’s hole, with almost brutal force.  
  
Ben cried out and bent down to his fist, biting it to block another shout as Billy kept penetrating him, increasing the number of slicked fingers to two and then three, in an imitation of Ben’s teasing in the stream. The hard thrusts he submitted himself to in a pretended act of meekness, just like the spanking, only served to increase his lust. By letting the man think he had more control than he actually had, for the price of a reasonably tanned ass and a strangely arousing, pretended humiliation, Ben experienced how good the large, callous fingers felt inside him, as they hit the sweet spot in a punishing pace, as if Billy tried to puncture him to the core of his belly.  
  
When Ben tried to touch his cock, Billy slapped his hand away, swatted his ass a couple of times for the act and then entered him again, fingers hard and relentless, pace increasing as Ben moaned and Billy grabbed his neck with his free hand.  
  
”Stop whining.”  
  
Ben’s untouched cock was aching, painfully hard and leaking from this humiliating act and he couldn’t help but squirm a little, clenching around the brutal fingers that kept hitting him right where he needed it the most and Ben’s moans turned to high pitched shouts.  
  
”I’m gonna…”  
”Don’t.”  
”Please… Billy, I can’t!”  
”Don’t come.”  
  
The hard voice, coloured from lust, pushed Ben over the edge and his seed painted the floor without a single touch to his cock. He clenched around the fingers that, finally, left him and then he heard how Billy unbottoned his trousers. He was half afraid, half hopeful, the man would fuck him, but instead he was kept down by the hard hand as Billy jacked himself off, squirting in the crack of Ben’s ass with a poorly restrained groan.


	37. Chapter 37

Billy’s fingers kept touching his skin in light strokes, circling around like they didn’t know where to go. Ben had his eyes closed, laying on his stomach across the man’s lap, resting his head on one of the pillows in the bed. Billy had wiped them off and then returned to rearrange Ben over his lap again. The red skin hurt, but not too bad, and the man was careful not to touch the sore parts.   
  
”Wont be any bruises this time.”  
  
The large man seemed remorseful, as if he felt bad about it and Ben sighed.  
  
”I put myself in this position, Billy. Literally.”  
  
Something clearly sounding like a smile almost tipping over to a quiet chuckle could be heard from Billy and Ben felt a hand in his hair, combing the tangles with slow, almost hesitating moves.  
  
”Have you… done this with someone else before?”  
”No. No man, no woman and nothing in between.”  
”Why did you… _what_ makes you want it?”  
  
_This. To see and feel you relax again, believing you’re in charge. That, and the strange fact that it makes my blood boil._  
  
”Because it feels good, I guess. In some fucked up way.”  
  
_And feeling you taking control without needing the bottle, is so fucking arousing, even if I’m the one directing it. I love the feeling of being held down, controlled, by a strong man and who’s stronger than you?  
_  
”You’re right. It’s pretty fucked up.”  
  
The other hand was resting right above the tanned ass and Billy’s thighs were slightly wided, to give room for Ben’s cock to avoid friction. The fingers kept stroking Ben’s thighs, making the hairs there raise and the skin form goose bumps. When they reached down between the legs, to the sensitive skin, Ben froze and Billy stopped.  
  
”Did… did I hurt you? I mean… before?”  
”No. Not much.”  
  
There was still a slight burn from the man’s fingers and whether it was the darkness, the strange closeness or something else, Billy moved him from his lap very gently, fetched the oil and the aloe and pulled Ben back in the position that now seemed far more comforting than shameful.  
  
Ben could feel a little dripping from the oil down his crack, before the slightly brushing presence of a large finger slipped between his cheeks and smeared the oil all over the puckered skin in long, careful strokes, before pushing carefully against his entrance.   
  
”Relax. Not gonna hurt you.”  
  
Billy widened him with two fingers, before dripping some of the soothing ointment right inside Ben’s hole, using a well slicked finger to rub it in. I was a very unexpected sign of care, remembering how hard he’d gone on Ben earlier and it felt good. Billy didn’t seem in any hurry to finish and when his finger slipped out, he put more oil onto his palm before taking Ben’s balls in it. Ben gasped and tightened, but Billy shushed him.  
  
”Said I wont hurt you.”  
  
Billy rolled his balls loosely in his palm, carefull, just a light, oily touch, soft like velvet and so completely different from anything Ben would’ve thought the man capable of. The man’s cock was swelling behind the trousers fabrics, brushing against Ben’s hip, but Billy was focused only on him, on the strange way he made Ben aroused again. Small puffs of air landed on the oiled skin, tickling and chilling it, and Ben let out an involuntarily moan.  
  
”Fucks sake, Billy! Gonna tease me to death, huh?”  
  
A sharp smack made him gasp and then Billy returned to stroke Ben’s balls again. He swirled a hand around Ben’s ignored cock and chuckled a little.  
  
”Bloody hell… You really like this… Why didn’t you tell me during the resistance?”  
  
He slapped him a second time and Ben moaned.  
  
”You never asked.”  
  
The hand alternated between rolling the balls, teasing his entrance, tugging at his cock and placing lots of slaps, having Ben’s already blushing ass cheeks tingle and quiver. A particularly sharp swat had him groan and he turned his head around to glare at the man.  
  
” _You_ really like this too, Mr. Bones.”  
  
Billy rubbed his skin and got a teasing glimpse in his eyes.  
  
”Told you. You look good on my lap, Mr. Gunn.”  
  
A slicked finger suddenly pressed all the way inside Ben’s clenching hole and moments later, he came over the man’s course trouser’s leg.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, this is turning a little bit kinky, I suppose... *sorry not sorry*
> 
> I'm so happy for all who're following this story, every kudo makes me giggle with happiness and so do comments! Don't hesitate to leave one if you want to, because comments make fanfic authors purr like Betsy in Randall's arms <3


	38. Chapter 38

To Ben’s surprise, Billy didn’t fuck him. In fact, the man didn’t do any advances at all, and with another man Ben might have taken it as disinterest. Only, Billy wasn’t like other men. He wasn’t stupid, of course he was aware of how Ben had played him in all the different ways to push him forward, but he didn’t take advantage of it the way other men with his taste would’ve. And more important, he didn’t pull back in shame or denial but rather showed a silent interest when he was presented with an opportunity.  
  
The carefulness was another sign of how Billy Bones differed to other men. In Ben’s experience, most men didn’t use fingers longer than they had to in order to loosen up, themselves or others, and he’d been with men who never recieved and also were too impatient to spend time on preparation for the receiving man’s sake. He’d never been with a man who stayed with fingers to make him come and didn’t went on fucking him. On the other hand, Billy probably hadn’t experienced many men who’d put themselves across his lap either, and even though the submission from Ben’s part was clearly acted and they were both silently aware of that, the strange role play seemed to provide them both with a sense of stability.  
  
There was, in no way, any doubts that the former first mate took pleasure in it. Not from causing Ben any serious pain or humiliate him, but from the trust Ben showed him and in the very clear manners he showed his needs. Billy’s life as a pirate had been as much about having a place and a clear role, to be _needed_ , as about the freedom. Ben didn’t need him for survival or protection, they had no flock to care for anymore and this game of submission and domination, gave Billy a role. A strange one, no doubts about it, but it created a much needed illusion of control and purpose that served to make the former first mate taking small steps out of his longterm loneliness.  
  
The lack of cock in Ben’s ass, clearly wasn’t due to disinterest from Billy’s side and Ben was more than a little curious of the cause for the first mate’s self-inflicted restriction. He didn’t even let Ben suck him or use his hand anymore, but seemed to prefer simply spanking Ben, tugging and fingering him until he came before jacking himself off and finish over the crack of Ben’s ass. Strange as it was, Ben was still a pirate and had both seen proofs of and heard others talk of lot of unusual – not to mention heavily frowned upon and/or illegal – sexual urges throughout the years. Fingering another man’s tanned ass and then squirt your seed over it, still wasn’t more strange than sucking a whore’s tit while calling her mother. A quite popular service in many brothels Ben had visited, but in no way as pleasant as Billy’s rough palms and long fingers.  
  
It didn’t happen everyday, but often enough to call it a habit. And little by little, the act extended. They slept in the same bed, naked, and with Billy spooning him. The feeling of the man’s large, stiff cock almost nestled between Ben’s buttocks, was highly arousing and left Ben extremely puzzled, because if he tried to brush back against it or touch it, Billy would simply grab his wrists, put a heavy thigh over Ben’s hip and keep him still. Occasionally, he would place a swat on Ben’s ass, as a reminder of how he felt about teasing.  
  
Billy Bones was… possessive. Strict, possessive and completely unused to examine himself. Those were the most accurate words Ben would use to describe the man who’d lost his cause and was finally searching for a new one outside the bottle and his own bitterness. He worked a lot, made fences, improved the small house, went out hunting, prepared skins and made tools. It was a man still too close to the brink of self-destruction to relax and it was in moments when that brink seemed in danger to be crossed, when Ben silently would lead the man to whatever suitable place nearest by – a stump, a fallen bole or a flat rock – make him sit down, drop his own trousers and bend over.  
  
Billy never went too hard on him and didn’t seem to mind that Ben took the initiative, but it always hurt enough for Ben to squirm and pant, sometimes even let out a whine or two, that had the former first mate stop and indulge him with some rubs before he continued. He would give them both release as it suited him and then let Ben rest on his lap, where the rough hands turned to touches almost reminding of those of a gentle lover’s. But what name these acts of intimacy would go by, remained unclear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so happy for all who're following this story, every kudo makes me giggle with happiness and so do comments! Don't hesitate to leave one if you want to, because comments make fanfic authors purr like Betsy in Randall's arms <3


	39. Chapter 39

”No.”  
  
It was late and Ben once again read the signs and started to unlace himself, when Billy shook his head and stilled Ben’s hand. Ben didn’t comment the change, just nodded and simply turned to put more wood on the small fire instead. Honestly, he was a bit relieved, becuase no matter how arousing the experience was, the soreness lasted a while and sooner or later, they had to talk about it. About _them_. It was exhausting to keep the ground under Billy’s feet steady.  
  
Ben sat down by the fire and leaned his chin on his knees. Billy poured them some ale and handed Ben one of the cups before he sat down on the stool behind him.  
  
”Thank you.”  
  
It wasn’t very strong and it was probably for the best. After all his troubles, Ben didn’t like the idea of seeing what little progress he’d had with Billy turn to ashes for the sake of a stupid bottle. It felt soothing, just sitting down in silence and look into the fire, not feeling the weight of anything, really. Not the shadows from their shared past, their confused presence or a highly uncertain future.  
  
The fire was cracking and Ben felt a callous hand entangle in his hair, hard fingers slowly combing the tresses like an insecure tongue trying to form words in a foreign language. A partucarly tangled knot had Ben groan a little and he made a gesture towards the small box he’d carved out.  
  
”There’s a brush in there.”  
  
Billy rose and returned moments later with the brush Ben had saved from a prize long ago and forgotten on the Maroon Island during the war. He’d found it on his return from Savannah with Silver and it was one of few items he brought with him when he left to search for Billy. Keeping the brush away was hardly necessairy now, but he’d spent fifteen years at sea where items not watched for would disappear very quickly and old habits are hard to break.  
  
The hands using the old brush were unsurprisingly unused to the task, but rather quick learners. Patient and careful, they undid knots and tangles and brushed them smooth and even. Ben couldn’t resist commenting it.  
  
”You’ve done this a lot?”  
”No. Used to watch my father combing mother, though. She had a comb made of turtle shell, she’d inherit from her mother. Father… he… mother had very long hair and he loved to comb it. She let me try a couple of times, but I was too impatient.”  
”You’re quick learner.”  
  
The man didn’t answer, just grunted a little and kept brushing. The knots and tangles were gone now, but Billy didn’t seem eager to stop. Ben moved a little closer, nestling himself between the man’s thighs and Billy finally put the brush away. He allowed his fingers to move the hair over Ben’s shoulder and expose the neck, brush over the warm skin between the hairline and the the shirt collar. It was anxious, insecure touches, but also filled with a recently discovered although not yet fully admitted longing.  
  
With patient, sometimes miscalculated steps, Ben had brought the lost man closer to a shore at least more safe than anything he’d had since Silver entered the crew and Captain Flint’s rage had gone from barely managable to an uncrolled force heading for disaster. Ben realised one of the things all three men had in common, was the weariness. He’d witnessed it from all of them, the three all in their own way highly intelligent men, but at the same time so unused to real trust.  
  
They all had their reasons, of course, and it wasn’t as if Ben was a naive man. The world was a cruel place and some dreams did best not to be dragged out in the harsh reality, but the sad thing was that even when the reality had changed enough to live out at least a little of their longings, Billy, Flint and Silver all had been too afraid to allow it. They’d all been powerful men but just as the war hadn’t been enough for Flint and Madi wasn’t enough for Silver, the pack and cause wasn’t enough for Billy. Flint had realised it on the way to Savannah, Silver knew it the moment he saw Thomas and Flint on the field but then forced it away not to get crushed by it.  
  
Ben had seen the weariness within all three men. Sometimes disguised as anger, frustration or determination. Coldness, seemingly heartlessness and hate. But it was so much more than that. Flint, Silver and Billy weren’t average pirates or brutes. Dangerous and violent, coldblooded and desperate, yes, but they weren’t simple thieves or heartless monsters. Silver had been the one who understood Flint a lot and Billy to some extent, while Flint had been too wrapped up in his darkness to let anyone in before it was too late, or understand the full extent of how his secrets would impact on others – or himself – in the end.  
  
Billy understood better than any of them, how much the right kind of flock could mean. How trust and care could build up strenght and unity even with men who at first sight appeared too weak. Ben had seen it during the resistance. How lousy pirates had gone from passable shooters and sad drinkers to a force to be reckoned with. Billy was also, strange as it might seem, the first one to truly understand the impact Madi held over Silver. What he’d failed to understand, was the way Madi and Flint understood each other. Silver had failed to understand that too and they’d both paid a high price for it. Ben hoped that Silver would be able to reconcile with his queen, but the damage he’d done to her people’s cause by reuniting Flint with Thomas by going behind her back, had created a space between them that, even when the wound healed, would never truly vanish.  
  
The thoughts had made Ben even more tired and he leaned his arm onto Billy’s thigh. The man nudged at him.  
  
”Rise.”  
  
Ben did so and Billy removed the stools, sat down on the floor and pulled Ben with him. Using himself as a support, Billy made Ben lean back completely and then swirled his huge arms around him without a word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so happy for all who're following this story, every kudo makes me giggle with happiness and so do comments! Don't hesitate to leave one if you want to, because comments make fanfic authors purr like Betsy in Randall's arms <3


	40. Chapter 40

Something told Ben to stay still. Billy probably would’ve himself, had Ben moved, but it wasn’t necessairy. He went limp and heavy in the man’s arms and widened his legs enough to at least make sure Billy knew he was invited. Although not as well-formed as the former first mate, Ben had thick, muscled thighs, hidden beneath the rough fabric of his loose, durable trousers, and he intended to remind Billy of that.  
  
Billy’s heart was beating like the one of a chased animal and Ben could feel it against his shoulder. Whatever was going on inside the man’s head, it wasn’t the right moment to tease him or make any bold moves. Instead, Ben moved a little to lean his head onto Billy’s shoulder, bending into the crook of his neck. It was a submissive move, not a frightened one and very exposing in it’s vulnerability. It was a gesture openly asking for closeness, not enforcing or manipulating it.  
  
The stubbled skin was a bit course, but warm and Ben’s own short beard scraped just a little over Billy’s neck. The larger man sighed but when Ben took it as a sign of disliking and began move, Billy put a heavy palm on his temple and stopped the withdrawl, pulling Ben close again and let him lean into him.  
  
It was in a way just as strange as the other forms their closeness took, even more so. The spankings were of course highly unusual, but they still had enough sexual undertones and too little softness to make them truly intimate. It seemed as if all their tools used to come together, never brought them truly close to one another. They both knew Billy wasn’t in control, but as long as Ben acted like he was, the shit scared man at least didn’t run off.  
  
Ben turned around and put his legs over Billy’s left thigh to make the turn of his neck less straneous for the muscles. The other man allowed the change and put his arm around Ben’s shoulders to support him. They didn’t talk and Ben felt how Billy’s mouth brushed over his hair, slow and searching, like he was still trying to figure out what it was he had in his arms and what to do with it. Ben took his hand and swirled their fingers together, pressing them to his chest. The callouse hand was warm and firm and Billy’s thumb brushed carefully over the back of Ben’s hand. Ben bent his head further onto the other man’s shoulder, waited and moments later, he felt the warmth of Billy’s mouth, resting against his nape.  
  
Time seemed to move like it had been burdened with an anchor, only able to take the smallest steps possible while the weight only dug deeper into the sand, slowed it down and Ben couldn’t stand it anylonger. He used his free hand and snaked it around the former first mate’s head, turned it down and catched the lips in a kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so happy for all who're following this story, every kudo makes me giggle with happiness and so do comments! Don't hesitate to leave one if you want to, because comments make fanfic authors purr like Betsy in Randall's arms <3


	41. Chapter 41

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys are back!

He’d wondered how it would feel like. The soft, warm lips, the course beard. How he would taste. Ben tasted like summer. Like ocean and woods, fields and rich earth. Something liveful yet steady and familiar, tireless and tough like an old ship crossing rough waters with the confidence and calm only one who’ve went through hard times and managed to live along to see another day.   
  
Ben was the first to break the kiss, slowly and with a questioning but not scared or worried look. The clearblue iris seemed to brush all over Billy’s face, searching for some sign to know where they stood and all Billy could do to get away from those eyes, was to kiss the man again.   
  
He was such a beautiful man, once the layers of imprisonment, war and struggles started to go off. The seriousness, cautiosness and unease that made people dismiss or not even notice him, was what had made Billy feel drawn to him. The openness and most of all the kindness he had even after what he’d been through. The playfulness in his smile, like he knew a sweet secret that kept him from falling down like Billy, Flint and Silver all had. Billy put a hand on the man’s cheek, deepening the kiss and elicited a soft moan from him. The sound made his heart speed up and his body alert, the heat from the kiss stirring up lust and something very close to softness inside the first mate.  
  
He couldn’t recall this kind of closeness with any other man or woman in the past. This was too intimate, not physically but between their souls, stupid as it might sound. They were pirates, former perhaps, but still nothing but sons of the sea, used to a hard life who’d long since stopped thinking of a life beyond the sea with a home and wife. But Billy had never pictured a wife. His mind had never allowed to reach any further than maybe a matelot to share bunk and bounty with. Longing for things that could never be was dangerous. Wasn’t Flint the best warning of that?  
  
Ben’s mouth kept searching and Billy opened up, couldn’t resist it because he wanted this even if he’d not known it until now. The man in his arms slowly rearranged himself to face him, straddling his lap and the worried eyes replaced words and questions, in a language Billy started to believe he could actually learn. He let his hands go astray under Ben’s shirt, following the spine all the way up with nimble touches and the man hummed, visibly pleased with the searching and the way Billy’s hands walked, but he didn’t increase anything, didn’t push.   
  
Billy had felt his own hardness for some time now and he couldn’t hold back a moan as he, in a swift and determined move, pressed Ben close, feeling their cocks rub together through the layers of fabric. He held the man’s hips tight, digging his fingers into firm flesh and squeezed it, kneaded it because it made Ben’s breath speed up, his lips more impatient and Billy’s own cock ache from the hard pressure of the other man’s groin.  
  
He’d wanted many things in life but nothing like this, no one like this blonde man. He wanted to claim him, mark him with hands and teeth, leave his own scent and sweat on his warm, lean skin. Billy moaned as Ben’s teeth sank down just below his ear and he slapped the man hard on the ass, not as a chastisement, but to encourage him to keep going. Ben arched from it and dug his mouth deeper down, earning another hard treatment from Billy’s palm and he moaned louder. It was nothing but entoxicating, seeing the reactions from his moves displayed right before him. How his kisses and palms made Ben flushed with want and Billy moved the man to his liking, brushing his own bulge over the clothed crack of Ben’s ass. Ben let out something close to a whimper.  
  
”Please… Billy, please, I need… I…”  
  
Billy cut his words with another swat, hard enough to border on painful, and the smaller man relaxed and leaned closer, allowed Billy to take control and the bigger man finally relaxed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so happy for all who're following this story, every kudo makes me giggle with happiness and so do comments! Don't hesitate to leave one if you want to, because comments make fanfic authors purr like Betsy in Randall's arms <3


	42. Chapter 42

This kind of submission was not a completely strange thing to him, even before this game with Billy had come to happen. Ben had been with men who’d wanted to dominate him and some who’d wanted to be dominated by him and from his experience, both roles could be equally pleasant depending on how well both partners played the game. How well you trusted yourself and the other man. And Billy wasn’t a trusting man by any means, wich forced Ben to take further measures.  
  
He rose his arms and let Billy take his shirt off, let him unlace his trousers and shove them down to his knees. The man’s rough palms rubbed Ben’s buttocks almost fondly before gripping his hips harder and pushing him backwards.  
  
”Get the brush.”  
  
There was no use trying to deny they both wanted this and Ben moved awkwardly, trousers hanging around his thighs and fetched the big, oval ivory brush. Billy took it and Ben laid down over the man’s lap, silent and obedient without any teasing, the only thing revealing how little of a punishment this was, being his hard cock pressing against Billy’s thigh.  
  
The former first mate was as good with the backside of the ivory brush as with his palm or the switch and Ben did his best not to squirm but he was already sore from previous spankings and it wasn’t long before he cried out.  
  
”Please, stop! Just a moment, please Billy, I can’t…”  
  
He was prepared for the man to continue this mock punishment, but Billy put the brush away and started rubbing Ben’s sore buttocks.  
  
”You should see yourself now, Ben. So… lenient. Is this what you need?”  
  
He took the brush and placed half a dosen more smacks while Ben panted and tried to not whimper. Billy stopped again and rubbed the abused flesh. Ben swallowed.  
  
”I need _you_ , Billy.”  
”To dominate you like this? You no longer wish to be a free man? Maybe we should’ve left you in that cage.”  
  
Ben bit down his fist to block a shout as Billy, who didn’t wait for an answer, started spanking him again, hard and fast. The pain was breathtaking and Ben felt no unbarable humiliation, only the shameful but glorious submission burning inside him along with the blistering strikes and the purling lust in his belly.  
  
Billy stopped before Ben had any chance to come and widened his legs to make sure Ben couldn’t rub against his thigh. He let Ben catch his breath while rubbing his buttocks again.  
  
”I don’t think this is what you really need, Ben.”  
”I do.”  
”If you say so…”  
  
He took Ben’s arms and moved them back, locking them in a hard but not painful grip, impossible for Ben to get out of. Then he angled his right leg and put it over the folds of Ben’s knees. Ben took a deep breath, determined not to cry.  
  
He screamed. Loud and desperate, crying hot tears while begging Billy to stop. The former first mate was relentless and let the mock punishment last until Ben was a mess of tears and syllables. He put the brush away and carefully arranged the man to face him, legs hanging over his own thighs and then Billy laid them both down on the floor, with Ben as a human blanket on top of him. He cardened his fingers through the tresses of hair, stroke the warm skin on the back and shoulders, trying to understand what gave Ben this desperate urge to turn himself over like this, and why _he_ was unable to deny him when he still couldn’t give him what they both wanted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so happy for all who're following this story, every kudo makes me giggle with happiness and so do comments! Don't hesitate to leave one if you want to, because comments make fanfic authors purr like Betsy in Randall's arms <3


	43. Chapter 43

He’d been so young when he was taken by the navy and the sufferings he’d endured were of the kind one would never forget or forgive. It hadn’t only been men, but women too. While they were anchored somewhere and the captain had invited ladies for a tour on the fine navy ship. Sometimes one or two of them had taken a lot of interest in the cabin boy, who while still starved and bruised, had been cleaned up and dressed in decent clothes prior to the visits. The captain had called it a reward and thretened with half raisons and the whip if the boy didn’t stay silent and lenient.  
  
Billy Manderly had been raped by men and women, navy soldiers and fine ladies before he had any chance to know his own will and lust. When he’d been freed and became a brother to the pirates, it still took a long time before he felt comfortable with being touched in any way. He’d tried the whores in Nassau but always prefered the mollies in Tortuga and he was certainly not the only brother favouring the company of men – or both men and women. He prefered doing the fucking but unlike some other clients, he never treated the molly boys too rough. Billy had never relished in making another man feel pain in that way.  
  
As he fondly rubbed he pink flesh on Ben’s ass, the man whimpered softly and Billy couldn’t help but smiling. He moved the man further up, wetted a finger and reached down, teasing the entrance before pressing hard inside, entering just as brutal as the first time and Ben’s whimper turned to a shocked shout but he didn’t protest, only squirmed and tightened his grip around Billy’s shoulders, all but sobbing into the crook of his neck as he clenched around the finger, the hole warm and tight and asking for more with the desperate moves. Billy removed his fingers and quickly arranged Ben back over his lap, giving him a couple of swats and the man became pliant again.  
  
Back in control, or at least pretending he was, Billy moved the man again and quietly pulled him up, carrying him to the bed. This strange game had went on for far too long and Billy’d desired this man from the time in the resistance, just not being fully aware of it. He didn’t want to control him, he needed to, and the beautiful, pliant man not only let him. He encouraged the game.  
  
Billy put him on his stomach, spreading his legs almost casually. By God, he was a sight… Ass flushed pink, the puckered crack on full display before him. He was Billy’s for taking and all Billy wanted was to scoop him up like a pretty girl and treat him like he’d been a wife and not a pirate. The one thing a man like him couldn’t get in Nassau or London or any other place in the world. The feared first mate in Captain Flint’s crew and the leader of Nassau’s resistance had wanted this for so long, to have something similar to the love between a man and his wife, even if his own lust wasn't and never had been affected by a woman.  
  
He took the pot of oil and lifted Ben’s thighs to rest on his own, in a position that stopped the man from getting any friction on his cock. Billy used oil to prod and pry Ben open with his fingers, this time soft and careful without adding any unnecessairy pain. The man was pliant and obedient in his lap, only moaning a litte, and Billy intended to reward him for it.  
  
It was such a long time ago he’d been with anyone in full and the memory wasn’t a happy one. Billy’d accidently hurt more than one man who’d been impatient and not listened to him. He’d been all to easily talked into less preparation by men who assured they could take it only to end up hurt. The teasing from Ben had stirred up painful memories of occasions that were supposed to be pleasant but went wrong and Billy didn’t trust himself when he got teased like that. Especially not from a man as desireble as Ben Gunn. Billy simply had to be the one to decide how to go on with this and he couldn’t bare to tell the other man the reason for it. At least not yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so happy for all who're following this story, every kudo makes me giggle with happiness and so do comments! Don't hesitate to leave one if you want to, because comments make fanfic authors purr like Betsy in Randall's arms <3


	44. Chapter 44

The fingers turned rough, almost brusque in their efficiancy and the lack of emotional intimacy made Ben feel like probing his ass was a task and the former first mate simply a tool. Billy took a long time preparing him, more than he actually needed to, but the rule of this strange game was to let the man do this in his own pace. Billy didn’t want to hurt him more than Ben asked him to and the fingers hard pumping forced Ben to bite his own fist again.   
  
He was so hard he ached from it and leaked steadily over the bed and when Billy changed angle and hit the sweet spot inside him, Ben all but sobbed and quickly grabbed the base of his cock to keep himself from coming. Without a word, Billy withdrew his wicked fingers and tugged a piece of leather strap from his wrist. He snaked a hand between Ben’s legs and wrapped the strap around the man’s balls and then snugly around the base of the man’s cock. Ben didn’t protest. It was an interesting game Billy was playing and he wanted to see where it would take them.  
  
”Up.”  
  
Ben obeyed without a word and rose to his knees and hands. He could hear the sound of a belt coming off and trousers falling to the floor, but he didn’t dare to watch in fear of ruining the moment. If Billy couldn’t face him now it was because of the man’s own demons and had nothing to do with Ben.  
  
The mattress shifted as the former first mate went up behind him, widening Ben’s legs further and Ben heard the sound of oil from the pot. Then the head slid up and down over the crack of his ass a couple of times and Ben took a deep breath, biting down hard as Billy slowly entered him, inch by inch, all the way in before pulling out all but an inch or two, paused and then shoved it back inside, hard and punishing. Ben screamed and Billy stopped, just keeping Ben’s ass in a bruising grip, still buried balls deep inside him.  
  
”Does it hurt, Ben?”  
”Yes, it fucking hurts!”  
”You want me to stop?”  
”No!”  
”You want it gentle then?”  
  
The man’s voice was deep, low and very dominant, the sound of it making Ben shiver with want. This was the Billy he knew from Nassau. One who could and would take control when needed to, one who once again felt in control of himself and Ben’s tied cock ached from that want. Ben lowered his head, moving his ass further up in a sign of this mock submission.  
  
”Please, Billy, give me what I need.”  
  
Once again he was entered slowly and the thick, generously slicked cock filled his entrance. He could feel the other man’s pulse, how the large member throbbed against the walls of his hole. Billy stopped and Ben forced himself to just stay still and quiet, not begging or demanding, not asking and his compliance was rewarded. Billy pulled out all the way to his bellend and then repeated the punishing intrusion, hitting that sweet spot deep inside him, made Ben whimper and shout.   
  
Ben had been fucked, but not like this. It hurt, but he’d rather die than asking Billy to stop. The pain and humiliation only made him harder, only served to increase the pleasure as the man worked him hard and relentless. If his cock hadn’t been tied off, Ben knew he’d been coming already and he cried out with every stroke, with every touch from Billy’s hips against his sore buttocks, bordering on the line between pleasure and pain in almost perfect harmony.   
  
Billy pulled out and quickly turned Ben onto his back, arranging his legs to rest on his own thighs and pushed into him again, coming inside in a different angle and Ben catched the man’s eyes, pupils black with lust, not giving away from his gaze but meeting it, hot and challenging as he fucked him hard and fast. As Ben moaned higher, louder, the other man took to untie the strap, still thrusting in the same pace and Ben felt how his body started to shake, sore and desperate for release, his eyes filling with tears and balls pulling tight as he reached his climax, deep and primal.  
  
Billy didn’t let him off but kept pounding into him, lacing the sweet, sweet release with a stroke of pain before the man finally emptied his seed inside him with a low, guttural growl.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so happy for all who're following this story, every kudo makes me giggle with happiness and so do comments! Don't hesitate to leave one if you want to, because comments make fanfic authors purr like Betsy in Randall's arms <3


	45. Chapter 45

”I needed that…”  
  
The man’s voice was hoarse but quiet and Ben didn’t answer at first. He couldn’t. He’d fucked and been fucked numerous times, but not like this and he felt too raw and breathless to find words, lesser then giving voice to them. They were splayed out on the mattress, sticky and wet from body fluids and just tried to wind down.   
  
Ben laid on his stomach, feeling how the burn all over and inside his ass, slowly starting to turn into the dull ache of past pleasure. It hurt, but it was a sweet pain he’d gladly submitted to and one he’d longed for, for a very long time. He could still feel the other man’s seed leaking from his thoroughly fucked hole and it wasn’t likely he’d be able to sit for a couple of days. He swallowed, tried to moisten his mouth.  
  
”Me too. All of it…”  
  
Billy rose, slowly and with visible stiffness. He fetched water, a cloth and washed himself. He then took the ointment and sat down by Ben’s side. With soft hands he soothed the red skin and the puckered, stretched hole. Ben hissed as the coolness touched his raw ass and when Billy rubbed ointment first on his buttocks and then inside him, he whined quietly and involuntarily clenched around the finger. The man chuckled.  
  
”You’re a man of many colours, Ben Gunn, but I think red suits you the best.”  
  
Ben just hummed, too dozy to actually speak or move. He felt like his insides had turned into glowing embers, that he was still partly burning all over and Billy’s touch softened a little.  
  
”Was it too much?”  
”No. Don’t think I’ll be able to sit for a couple of days but it’s worth it. Definately worth it.”  
”I doubt I’ll ever understand that.”  
”Don’t have to understand it as long as you take pleasure in it.”  
”I do, I admit that. Can’t imagine why anyone would want to be in your position, though.”  
”I wouldn’t want to trade with you either.”  
  
The former first mate brushed his finger around Ben’s hole, smearing his own seed over the rim in a teasing circle. It was a very intoxicating sight, seeing a part of himself leaking from the tight entrance over the puckered skin, barely hidden between two firm, glowing buttocks, blushing like autumn apples. Billy caught the seed on his fingers and gently pushed inside.  
  
”Oh…”  
  
Ben whimpered, surprised and sensitive. He was loose and wet and the other man’s finger slipped in with ease. Billy chuckled.  
  
”You’ve not had enough yet? You want more of this?”  
  
Ben ignored the teasing tone and turned around, smiling.  
  
”Perhaps later… But right now I really need something to drink.”


	46. Chapter 46

Spare the rod, spoil the child. Or in this case lover. Billy kept stroking the marbled skin, almost smiling at his handiwork. Ben had filled out beautifully after the imprisonment and the firm, buxom buttocks, now red and sensitive, once again made the former first mate think of blushing windfall, filled with earthy sweetness hidden beneath the peel.   
  
He spread the muscled thighs and allowed himself to stroke over the small hairs, feeling how soft the man was as he was moved to Billy’s liking. The rim looked pink and puffy, he was probably quite sore dure to the harsh treatment, but he was still lax and looked at ease. Traces of fluid still remained and somehow reminded Billy of what he’d never wanted, that he’d never wished to give from his seed to grow in a woman. This barren union, knowing that his seed was in this man not to bare a new life, but only because it was Billy’s to give and Ben wanted it, wasn’t only about carnal urges or doing one’s duty to a family tree. It gave no life, because it didn’t have to. It wasn’t necessairy to create a bond.  
  
Billy was a harsh man who could make his lover pliant and submissive, but beneath all it was Ben who had the control, which made the submission so much more intoxicating. It meant Billy Bones was a man Ben respected enough to give in to, that he on some level trusted him despite their unfortunate past, trusted him so much he was ready to risk a vulnerability one normally only could have a highly unsatisfied sliver from, as long as you had a willing molly and coins to pay for the hour. Billy wasn’t sure what to do with this knowledge, all he knew was that his own seed dripping from Ben somehow was more fruitful than ever in a woman’s womb.  
  
Ben moaned softly as Billy collected the remains of his wet gift and slowly pushed two fingers inside, not rough but caressing, as if this simple carnal release had unlocked doors Billy’d not even been aware existed.  
  
He wanted to tell the man that he was beautiful, more desireble than any man or woman who’d crossed Billy’s path. That he’d been wrong all this time, wrong, bitter and stupid, too blinded by past wounds to dare tasting fruit offered to him with a blueeyed smile. Too afraid of rejection or emotional bonds that would let him know another kind of pain than the loss of a brother and friend.  
  
Silver had never known what he’d taken from Billy with his betrayal. How could a man free from all human bonds ever understand that pain. Without letting Ben know, Billy had been thinking a lot about Silver, Flint and Thomas Hamilton, the man he only admitted existed because he just knew Ben wouldn’t lie. It made no sense what so ever and still all the sense in the world. If that was love, then what was this madness? By what name would the bond he’d forged with Ben be called?  
  
The man’s wet, loose warmth moved with wantonness despite the visible soreness and the way he opened up to him made the stern, former first mate feel strangely weak. He’d given the man pain, although openly asked for, but still. Ben must be sore and yet he clenched around Billy’s fingers, trying to make them linger and the unspoken plead had his own blood rush again. God in heaven, what was it with this man that had his body and soul ache for him? That made Billy want to chastise, mark, comfort and claim Ben Gunn for his own?  
  
Billy searched for the oil and accidently tipped one of the empty wine cups over, causing Ben to smile and Billy swallowed. The man looked happy, calm and the thought of having him a second time made Billy’s already hard cock leak. He needed to bury himself in that clenching heat again, the blushing, ample cheeks so invitingly spread out before him was so tempting but he didn’t want to cause the man more pain. Billy slicked his fingers again, momentarily ignoring his own lust and kept going soft and searching, listening to the man’s sounds, looking at the way he moved and how the last traces of seed mixed with the oil as the puckered skin clenched and released like a wet flower around his hard fingers.  
  
He moved the man further up, placed one of the pillows under his belly and spread his legs as wide apart as possible. He wanted to see all of Ben Gunn, see how he wanted him, how he trusted him to give him pleasure and Billy slicked himself, straddled the man and entered.  
  
He’d not realised just how silky and wet the man was the first time and Billy bit back a moan as he went in slowly and felt how the muscles loosened around his cock, inviting him almost impatiently. He’d used their fucking to feel like he was putting Ben in place and this… This was nothing like it.  
  
The former first mate leaned over, covered the smaller man’s body with his own and searched for his hands, swirling them together as he pulled out and then back in, as deep as he could, but slow and soft and Ben met him, rolling his hips to come closer, all but mewling as Billy seemingly slid just right, hitting that sweet spot. Billy moved slower, nibbled at the warm shoulder and nuzzled the ear.  
  
”This good? S’it right?”  
”Yes… God, yes…”  
  
Billy squeezed his hands harder as he kept fucking deep into the man. Ben’s moans and pantings were unabashed, unaffected like he didn’t have to pretend or exaggerate a thing. He gasped, pushed and rubbed his hips backwards, meeting Billy’s thrusts, following his moves in such a shameless manner, Billy had to close his eyes and thrust a little harder, showing who was doing the fucking, who was in charge, and the delusion helped.  
  
Ben became lost to their coupling. He felt so good, moaning in pleasure from every stroke, no longer caring about anything but the aching sweetness, the way the man’s hips rubbed against his sore flesh, reminding of the glorious submission and the lingering soreness from it.  
  
He felt how Billy loosened his hands only to swirl one of them even harder into Ben’s. With an ease as if he’d been an actual giant, Billy shifted to place the pillow under Ben further up and then took his cock in hand, stroking it in a tight grip.  
  
_”Billy…”_  
  
Ben cried out, clenching so hard Billy couldn’t move, cock buried balls deep as Ben came over the man’s fist, pulsating and shuddering. The first mate leaned over to hold him, stayed still until Ben loosened around him and caught his breath. Then Billy pushed deep and came, emptying his seed in the only way he’d ever wanted to.  


	47. Chapter 47

”I’m sorry…”  
”For what?”  
”Well… I… I didn’t want to actually hurt you.”  
”Billy…”  
”What?”  
”Please, shut the hell up and let me enjoy the moment. I’ve needed this for years…”  
  
Billy snorted but his eyes were soft. Ben laid on his stomach, completely spent and with a dull ache in his body. He’d needed this, yes, as did the former first mate. After pulling out from him, Billy hadn’t turned away or been the least harsh, quite the contrary. Ben’s skin was covered with small, shallow kisses, he’d been gently washed with a cool cloth and now, after giving them both a generous amount of ale, Billy pulled the cover over them.  
  
The man faced him, pulled him onto his chest and Ben closed his eyes. Billy’s massive arms cradled him and Ben could feel the steady heartbeats against his ear. They didn’t talk, just held onto each other in the bed, placed in this hidden cabin they could almost call home. It was strange, wrong and perhaps even sinful, but it was theirs and perhaps the closest to a safe place in the world they’d ever had.  
  
Fingers in his hair, palm down the small of his back. Billy caressed him ever so softly, all traces of harshness, lust or fear gone from the touch. There was only tenderness, only care and when Ben looked at him, Billy’s dark eyes were as calm as the sea at dawn and the only name Ben had left for what that gaze made him feel, was no longer unknown, only unspeakable. At least for now. Ben was exhausted for more than one reason and he felt it like he’d been on this journey for so long, like he’d finally started to get steady ground under his feet. But some things were still so very uncertain and Ben squeezed the man’s arm.  
  
”Please tell me one thing, Billy…”  
”What?”  
”That you’re not leaving me.”  
  
Billy buried his nose in Ben’s hair.  
  
”Even if I could, I wouldn’t want to. I need this too… I need… _you_. So, whatever this is that we have… please, let me stay with you, Ben Gunn.”


End file.
